> “All these years I have been feeling like I’m doing something responsible,” said Pai, clearly dumbstruck as she walked away with a full bag. “The truth hurts.”
All is not lost. Consumers can be responsible by radically cutting consumption.
All is not lost. Consumers can be responsible by radically cutting consumption.
If I drop my consumption by $20k, I believe my extra investment of $20k will get consumed elsewhere in the economy.
If I spend that $20k on eco-friendly shit, I believe that the people I spent it on spend the majority of that on non-eco friendly shit (e.g. international travel holidays).
I want a better answer - one that isn't some simplistic catchphrase.
Another way might be to accept a smaller salary and work less. The salary economy requires a lot of consumption compared to just sitting at home doing nothing.
Independent of that, you can make specific decisions to avoid plastic-wrapped things. I’m visiting the US at the moment and I’ve seen plastic-wrapped corn, individually plastic-wrapped potatoes (!?!), eggs boiled shelled and in plastic, plastic cutlery individually wrapped in more plastic, straws given with every water at a restaurant (for adults?), plastic cups with plastic lids and plastic straws for every child, motel breakfasts with disposable plates and cutlery (they use a styrofoam cup for five seconds to get waffle batter and pour it in the cooker).
So people buy a coffee in a paper cup, or even worse a recyclable plastic cup. But the cup is less than 5% of the ecological impact of the coffee.
The growing of the coffee is where the impact is.
Generally we all get sidelined by recycling the packaging, as an anodyne to salve our consumptive guilt. Purest poisonous propaganda that we mostly willingly swallow.
As I asked: I want some answers for ways that I can help, backed by science and facts, not lies wrapped in plastic tinsel to misguide me.
Educating respectfully will accomplish much more than disdain and ridicule.
You want an answer that lets you consume coffee and not affect the environment. That's not possible in this world.
The demand for coffee is causing fragile native forest areas to be replanted in coffee.
And a lot of "eco-friendly" consumption is pure green-washing. I know people that provide eco friendly services, and I know what they spend their money on, and it is mostly just normal consumer consumption (e.g. international holidays which is clearly pure "waste"). Or eco-friendly people with 5 kids - who just can't see that children are a multiplier effect on current and future consumption.
I'm thinking supporting tree-planting NGOs might be a good start for example. This goes directly towards carbon-sequestration.
For example: Virtually every food item is packaged in plastic. And it’s not consumers who decided it was more cost effective to use disposable plastic than wash a reusable container.
Is it? Most of what I buy (vegetables, fruits, bread, eggs, milk, pasta, flour, sugar, salt, oil) is not.
Meat, fish, rice, and cheese are the things that require some plastic, afaict, but do not constitute the majority of food.
I don't think I've ever seen pasta not in a plastic wrapper?
For milk, it's usually in a plastic bottle, but often in tetra-pak type containers (don't honestly know what they're made of!).
With oil, it's usually in a plastic bottle, occasionally a glass one for more expensive EV olive oils, and rarely in Europe I've seen shops with oil dispensers that allow you to fill your own container.
For eggs, they are usually in a cardboard box, but occasionally in a plastic one.
For salt, I think I've only ever seen it in plastic bottles or bags.
It's layers of plastic, aluminum and paper glued together. The first two can't be separated, but they claim it's reused somewhere in construction.