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Comment by wesammikhail | Hacker News Reader

This is one of the most important problems to solve hands down. And not just for environmental reasons. I live alone and produce mountains of waste even though I consume very little. Every item I buy comes wrapped in unneccessary amounts of plastic. By the end of each week I have bags full of waste that shouldnt be there. I dunno how to solve for this but it´s seriously mind boggling how much waste is produced that has no reason for being there.

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You produce small hills of waste. Not mountains.

The waste feel needlessly big because you touch and see it. But on a real level, your and mine personal trash does not matter.

Nonsense.

I could flesh out my argument: I'd guess¹ 99%+ of damaging environmental events happen out of sight from us end consumers.

¹ Open to seeing real numbers if they exist!

The only way to win is to not play.

Seriously, did you truly "need" everything you purchased new and could you have gotten it second hand or forgone?

I already hear grumbling from the crowd, "opportuniy cost", "time", "but shiny!", etc.

That is the trade off for not feeding a system energy that is demostrably destroying everything of true value on this planet.

It's worth it.

I think the grumbling you hear from the crowd is their stomachs. People have to eat.

Yes. That would be a good place to start.

here where i live, a second hand market does not exist. it is not in the peoples culture. on the other hand you can buy a lot of food in bulk without it being prepackaged. but even that does not help because i need to put every item in a bag so it can be measured. for fruits and vegetables i can often put multiple items in one bag, but for sugar or flour that doesn't work, so no matter if i buy prepackaged or bulk, i end up with a new piece of plastic that i have to throw away.

I'm not sure about your bulk store but where I live you can just bring a reusable container or cloth bag or something, weight it and put your goods in that.

yeah, that works in shops where you can talk to the owners. they will actually appreciate not having to use their bags since that saves them money. but in large supermarkets the employees usually don't have the courage to deviate from what they are told to do.

or it's simply not practical because the scale is not close enough and i'd be blocking it for to long. on busy days there is often a waiting line to get stuff weighed. so really this only works if the shop expressly designs for reusable containers.

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