There’s not a thing you can do as an individual that will have near the impact of countering the wealthy gross over usage of resources and industrial pollution. It’s a fools errand so don’t try to guilt people who don’t recycle.
Once it became clear that a large portion of our recycled waste was just being sold and off shored to poorer countries, I stopped giving a fuck about recycling and stopped doing it. What I did start doing was doing everything I could to eliminate plastic from my life, or reuse what I did have until it broke.
The old ad slogan was “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” in that order because that’s the best order to try for. If you don’t need it, don’t get it. If you do need it, try to use it multiple times. If you can’t use it again, then try to recycle it. But the absolute best thing you can do is not get the thing initially.
Only a small percent ends up recycled and there’s some plastics that it’s cost prohibitive to recycle. Aluminum cans is another one I try not to introduce into my life as well. They have better margins for recycling but it’s easier than plastic to not include into your purchase.
I’ve seen a plant drain an entire towns water tower down to 12 inches. Not feet. Inches. They had to pay to truck in water. And all it was doing was running through a chiller and into the drain. Not even grey water.
Nothing you can do will move the needle on climate until the billionaire class is exterminated. Their continued existence is an existential threat. By living they kill, kill today and take lives of those still inborn. By existing they forclose the future.
The great filter exists, and it has a name. Musk. Thiel. Gates. Rockefeller. Exterminate them, or they will exterminate all life.
Also, hey Europeans, please buy your grandma a little split unit AC to cool her room. It’s not going to destroy life on this planet. But not buying it might kill your grandma.
800 million people (so just the population of US, CA, and EU) doing small things can absolutely have a larger impact though. Rich bastards do have a vastly larger impact than individual normal people but using that to say “I don’t have to do anything, the others are more at fault” is not helping anyone.
Recycling is about more than just plastics. It is a bit funny to me how that has always been the main focus though given how afaik it’s a lot less viable and/or useful than aluminium, cardboard, glass recycling.
There’s not a thing you can do as an individual that will have near the impact of countering the wealthy gross over usage of resources and industrial pollution. It’s a fools errand so don’t try to guilt people who don’t recycle.
Once it became clear that a large portion of our recycled waste was just being sold and off shored to poorer countries, I stopped giving a fuck about recycling and stopped doing it. What I did start doing was doing everything I could to eliminate plastic from my life, or reuse what I did have until it broke.
The old ad slogan was “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” in that order because that’s the best order to try for. If you don’t need it, don’t get it. If you do need it, try to use it multiple times. If you can’t use it again, then try to recycle it. But the absolute best thing you can do is not get the thing initially.
Only a small percent ends up recycled and there’s some plastics that it’s cost prohibitive to recycle. Aluminum cans is another one I try not to introduce into my life as well. They have better margins for recycling but it’s easier than plastic to not include into your purchase.
I’ve worked in manufacturing plants for the last almost 20 years. One packaging line will produce more waste in a day than you can hope to counter.
And that’s just the packaging part!
I’ve seen a plant drain an entire towns water tower down to 12 inches. Not feet. Inches. They had to pay to truck in water. And all it was doing was running through a chiller and into the drain. Not even grey water.
Nothing you can do will move the needle on climate until the billionaire class is exterminated. Their continued existence is an existential threat. By living they kill, kill today and take lives of those still inborn. By existing they forclose the future.
The great filter exists, and it has a name. Musk. Thiel. Gates. Rockefeller. Exterminate them, or they will exterminate all life.
Also, hey Europeans, please buy your grandma a little split unit AC to cool her room. It’s not going to destroy life on this planet. But not buying it might kill your grandma.
Edit: and buy yourself one too.
800 million people (so just the population of US, CA, and EU) doing small things can absolutely have a larger impact though. Rich bastards do have a vastly larger impact than individual normal people but using that to say “I don’t have to do anything, the others are more at fault” is not helping anyone.
I agree that works for stuff like ‘don’t litter’. But recycling at scale is literally impossible and they knew this when they pushed plastics on us.
Recycling is about more than just plastics. It is a bit funny to me how that has always been the main focus though given how afaik it’s a lot less viable and/or useful than aluminium, cardboard, glass recycling.
Also there are significantly less rich people