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Individual actions like these feel good for people, but don't really make much headway on the broader problems. For example if you are vegan, you are not directly supporting the factory farming of animal products, but meanwhile people will continue buying those products. I would venture to guess that inconvenient legislations like plastic straw or plastic bag bans have far more powerful outcomes than these sort of individual lifestyle efforts.

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> For example if you are vegan, you are not directly supporting the factory farming of animal products, but meanwhile people will continue buying those products.

This doesn’t make sense. Supply is driven by demand. Every vegan increases demand for plant-based products while decreasing demand for animal products. It is quantifiable. It is measurable. If every person on earth went vegan overnight, animal agriculture (one of the worst contributors to greenhouse gas emissions) would end immediately. ”Going vegan won’t make a difference” is just an excuse people use to avoid changing their behaviour.

This is very different to the greenwashing being discussed here, where the same amount of waste is produced, but it’s handled by the store instead of the consumer. In this case, no difference is being made.

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