You don’t recycle your packaging?
I tried doing all my bottles once - I like those big perrier glass bottles, but one time I turned in several hundred pounds of various glass and it was like $14 or something for an entire afternoon’s work, i dunno.
we have 2 trash bins where I live. food waste and everything else. the garbage companies do their own recycling, supposedly.
I don’t mean recycling to get the deposits back, I agree that’s not worth your time. You don’t have recycling pickup or bins where you live? That’s bananas.
nope, just regular bins, and food bins. if my city gets recycle bins, i’ve never seen one where i live. My understanding is that the garbage company does their own recycling. whether or not that’s true I really have no clue.
I re-use ALL my plastic. Utensils, bags, you name it, if it’s not gross I’m reusing it til it falls apart, that’s all I do lately.
the fact we even have single use plastic is ridiculous. The guy at my local liquor store used to love me when I was drinking, because I’d forgo the single use black liquor bags, because I have hands and can carry my fucking beer, but I guess they cost him a fair amount of money so he loved it.
Most of what we put out on the curb for recycling ends up in a landfill anyway. That’s not to say we shouldn’t, but it’s mostly feel-good greenwashing.
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CA loves greenwashing IMO. like, the plastic bag “ban” - wow, 10c for a heavier duty plastic bag that feels like it’s made out of legos, i can’t imagine how much worse these things are, and 99% of people aren’t gonna reuse them anyway or give a shit about 10 cents, so I am pretty sure you just created a worse problem there, chief
i would have charged at least $1 a bag. people bitched about the 10c, but like, 40 cents on your $200 grocery bill is nothing and barely anyone on earth would actually care about that.
I pray for a future society where you walk into a grocery store with no way to carry your shit, and then the cashier looks at you like you’re an idiot for buying all that crap without a way to carry it, but I doubt we’ll even get that far.
Yup - my city has been heavily cutting back what it accepts for recycling and still think most of the stuff isn’t actually recycled.
We live in a world where people still thinks it’s cool to release hundreds/thousands of plastic balloons. The idea that you’re going to convince people that plastic bags that actually serve a purpose are bad is going to be tough.
People may say they care about the environment, but like 90% of people are not willing to actually change their lives in meaningful ways to help.
I don’t think we’re as far from that as you think. There is a whole foods we go to where if you don’t have your own bags, it’s abnormal. I’d say 75% come with their own bags or are just picking up one or two things, so they don’t need one.
I do not believe we still live in a world where if every single person acted perfectly environmentally conscious that it would avoid the climate catastrophe we’re heading towards.
it’s gonna require global, massive action at this point.
i think putting any responsibility on the end consumer at this point is dumb, the way our entire society is structured makes it very difficult to live in a way that isn’t destructive, and I don’t think that’s on the end-consumer to deal with, but rather the dumb fucks in power, who find it more politically expedient to give 10,000 in student loan forgiveness to everyone and wa-la! 10 points approval rating. who needs to give a fuck about the environment when you’re dying in 10 years anyway.
yea that’s what I was referring to earlier
I’ve only seen stores in MA sell real reusable bags. I think they’re a buck or two. I’ve had mine for years. They also have old skool paper bags available. Some charge for them, others don’t.
They’re everywhere.
It kind of worked on me because I feel even more guilty about throwing them out, so I actually do re-use them more. Maybe 2 or 3 times per bag as opposed to never. I’m pretty sure their intent is far more than 3 uses.
how bad is plastic in a landfill? seems like properly collected, treated and compacted garbage should stay in a landfill for thousands of years, perhaps past when it would break down? if we do a decent job of separating compostable vs non-degradable trash, are we reducing the volume of landfills to some reasonable amount?
there’s also a plastic pollution exhibit on whidbey island (coupeville i think). it claimed that in terms of ocean pollution, 5 thinner bags are much worse than one thicker, even if it has the same amount of plastic. the reasoning being that thinner ones break into more smaller pieces and get consumed by many more smaller species, which would stay away from a bigger bag. anyone know if that’s true?
fwiw, most plastic floating in the ocean isn’t consumer, but discarded or lost fishing equipment, which continues to catch and kill sealife. the pacific beaches have so many buoys wash up after every storm, it really blows my mind. but seems like the buoys are mostly harmless, while nets they leave behind are much more dangerous to the environment
Good stuff, bros. 
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the fishes love munching on those thinner plastic bags? I guess you’re not big into seafood.
Once the plastic is in the ocean, it decomposes very slowly, breaking into tiny pieces known as microplastics, which can enter the marine food chain and become incredibly damaging to sea life. The main source of ocean plastic pollution is land-based—80% of plastic in the ocean originates on land.
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This is the theme of the recent bestseller (released last week) by well-known economic historian Brad DeLong. Amazon.com DeLong regards 1870-2010 as the long 20th century, where productivity gains finally permitted humanity to escape the Malthusian trap.
Chinese, Indian, Malaysian, Brazilian, Iranian, and US industrial and energy policy matter about million times more than US consumer behavior. If you care about climate write Xi, Modi, and Bolsonaro letters. I’m personally hoping that places like California make progress in cheaper, less polluting energy that other countries can steal in 10-20 years. The US should be spending billions on nuclear.
Even giving people the option to recycle detracts from reality. 95% of US environmentalism is performative.
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US is reducing greenhouse gases afaik. Now you just need to get China and India on board with your environmental plan.
Since 1990, gross U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by 7%. From year to year, emissions can rise and fall due to changes in the economy, the price of fuel, and other factors. In 2020, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions decreased 11% compared to 2019 levels.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#:~:text=Since%201990%2C%20gross%20U.S.%20greenhouse,11%25%20compared%20to%202019%20levels.
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But there’s another uncomfortable reality of climate change that many Americans still strongly resist: The problem is less and less under our nation’s control. The majority of the world’s carbon emissions now come from Asia, with China releasing by far the biggest share.
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