I always agreed that pollution should be a higher priority than climate change. The onus is on me to drive a hybrid to reduce my co2 output, but nothing is being done to curb polluting our waterways.
Packaging is a great evil. Most of our waste is packaging. My family recycles a lot, buys glass/aluminum when possible, and still we generate 2-3 bags of garbage each week, mostly food packaging.
Just for reference, what is the size of your family and what we the sizes of the garbage bags?
2 adults 1 teen and 1 child. Just normal sized garbage bags.
And the garbage bags themselves are packaging. It's hard to escape.
The supermarkets discovered they can get you to buy more tomatoes when there are six of them in shiny cellophane, so that's what they do. It's maddening. Not only that, it's nearly impossible not to use plastic packaging if you're not handily located near a co-op (or Unverpackt, if you're in Germany). In many cases I've been looked at suspiciously when I said I didn't need a bag for my two items at the checkout, as though there were something wrong with me. Saying "it just winds up in the back of my car" usually convinced them (never mind that I cycled there...)
Cashiers are sometimes bothered when I have a bunch of veggies not in individual bags, but that bag literally lasts 10 minutes until I get home and put the produce in the fridge. It's a massive waste.