Comment by acabal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by acabal | Hacker News Reader

I agree with Kellogg that individual change is both near-impossible and pointless. For most Americans it's not possible to live a day to day life without involving single use plastics and plastic packaging. For example I can't even go to my local supermarket and buy raw vegetables without involving single-use plastics: a sack of potatoes comes in a plastic bag, cucumbers are shrink wrapped (!) and often corn-on-the-cob is precut and packed in foam and plastic meat packs (!!).

Plus, at this point single-use plastic is part of our culture. How can you have Halloween without billions of tiny individually-plastic-wrapped candies? If you're an individual trying to be zero waste, are you supposed to tell your kid they can't do Halloween?

Change must necessarily come from legislation - that's the only single use plastic reduction has a chance. And I do think that people almost don't notice when it's gone - for example plastic shopping bags have been legislated away in many places in America and nobody seems to talk about that any more.

> individual change is both near-impossible and pointless.

I disagree, strongly, for two reasons.

1. Individual change is the only thing most of us can do

2. Legislation won’t happen until enough people care enough to demand it

For legislation to ever have a hope, the voting public needs to care enough to put candidates in office who will institute this legislation. I just don’t see how this happens if everyone concludes “there’s nothing I can do”.

I agree that the global impact of my actions aren’t enough on their own to make a difference in terms of actual waste output. But each of our individual actions are collectively a prerequisite to actual legislation.

The actions we each take also influence those around us, which is again a prerequisite to broader awareness and the outcomes this awareness can lead to.

Expecting legislation to solve this while carrying on as usual is washing our hands of responsibility. We need both things to happen.

> 1. Individual change is the only thing each of us can do

> 2. Legislation won’t happen until enough people care enough to demand it

I don't think the first item is quite right, and the second item even suggests it isn't. I would amend it to say that we can't guarantee anything but individual action (and even that is not certain), but it's far from the only thing we can do.

You caught that before my quick edit - I replaced “each” with “most”, but I agree with your amendment. It’s the one thing we can each absolutely start doing today. And the choice to do so is a meaningful one that changes each of us and the people around us.

I don't think anything can cause people to collect potato sacks from houses except poverty. The rag and bone man is a very low paid hard life and all of these medieval-scale recycling proposals overlook the details of the lives of the people who used to implement them.

It seems you're both agreeing that voting with your wallet doesn't help much, but voting with your vote does.

I’m disagreeing with the premise that making conscious choices about what I purchase can be reduced to “voting with my wallet”, or that we can conclude it “doesn’t help much” based only on a limited outlook on what helps i.e. there are many more reasons to do it that may never have a meaningful monetary impact on the system.

If legislation is the only real end goal, that raises the question: how do we reach that goal?

Gay marriage isn’t legal by some accident. Attitudes about cannabis aren’t shifting for no reason. These are issues that people cared deeply enough about to keep pressuring the system for decades. An apathetic voter base doesn’t accomplish those changes.

> I’m disagreeing with the premise that making conscious choices about what I purchase can be reduced to “voting with my wallet”, or that we can conclude it “doesn’t help much” based only on a limited outlook on what helps i.e. there are many more reasons to do it that may never have a meaningful monetary impact on the system.

The problem is that capitalism, like the internet, is a system designed to route around problems. From the position of the system, any node acting “incorrectly” and not maximizing its profit is doing it wrong.

If you refuse to eat beef, you are only making it cheaper for the people who will still eat beef. And they will eat more of it. The system routes around the error.

The only way to reliably effect large-scale changes in these economic patterns is to change the rules of the game. Which is why that is so fiercely contested, and why there’s so much effort to push the blame back down on individual behavior.

The difficulty with the path of trying to elect candidates that promise action on a particular issue is that there are always thousands of issues and no given candidate is likely to support all of your preferences so you have to decide which is more important. If a candidate agrees with you on single use plastics but is in opposition to your views on prison reform, which one do you give more importance? It's just one of the quirks of representative democracy that keeps issues with lower noise from being addressed.

> 2. Legislation won’t happen until enough people care enough to demand it

I can demand legislation to encourage/require behavior that I myself won’t practice in absence of said legislation.

It sounds counterintuitive but it makes sense… by analogy, if I’m a hockey goalie I may have the opinion that goalie pads have gotten too big and the game would be more exciting if they were required to be smaller. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to personally wear smaller goalie pads and put myself at a disadvantage, unless the league requires it.

I’m in favor of laws that reduce single use plastic even if I myself don’t go out of my way to avoid single use plastic. Too many products around me use it, and if I had to pay attention to every product I buy to avoid it, it would be very difficult. But if legislation existed to force companies to avoid making it in the first place, my individual purchasing decisions would remain simple and we’d all benefit.

> I can demand legislation to encourage/require behavior that I myself won’t practice in absence of said legislation.

By this logic, the primary basis on which we make decisions is whatever provides a personal advantage. It’s an unsustainable mindset that would regularly encourage unethical/immoral but otherwise legal actions.

Our individual lives aren’t businesses operating in a regulated environment or a goalie forced to operate under the rules all other goalies operate under. We live in the wide open space of every day life where we get to choose what everyday life looks like, for the most part.

There are some things that are important to do because they are important, regardless of the legal landscape. If you find yourself waiting for someone to force you to change, stop and consider the implications if everyone does the same thing.

> But if legislation existed to force companies to avoid making it in the first place, my individual purchasing decisions would remain simple and we’d all benefit.

At least in the US, this misses the critical fact that the government’s function is to represent the will of the people; not impose their will upon the people. Clearly the US system is not doing well in this regard, but there’s a strong case to be made that apathy and lack of individual involvement are primary factors in this dysfunction. In light of this - knowing that the system itself is struggling to meet its charter - it seems especially important not to just expect some magical legislative solution. People are going to have to get involved and do the hard work.

> By this logic, the primary basis on which we make decisions is whatever provides a personal advantage.

I think you’re approaching my comment in a very uncharitable way. I said I can support legislation that contradicts my personal behavior, not that I always do. I’m not saying I always act selfishly. I’m saying it’s possible (as in, not strictly speaking a fallacy) to act individually selfishly while also voting for legislation that is unselfish.

> At least in the US, this misses the critical fact that the government’s function is to represent the will of the people; not impose their will upon the people

That’s not what I’m saying at all? Are you sure you’re not just reading what you want to read in my statement? I’m saying I would support legislation (as in, I would vote for candidates that campaigned on this) that would limit the use of single use plastic. I’m not saying “the government should force this even if people don’t want it”. I’m saying “we should all collectively decide we want to ban single use plastic.” I don’t know how you interpreted the comment otherwise.

Sorry, I think I must have really misinterpreted/misunderstood the comment. I’ll see if I can explain why I interpreted it that way because I’d like to understand what you mean.

> > 2. Legislation won’t happen until enough people care enough to demand it

> I can demand legislation to encourage/require behavior that I myself won’t practice in absence of said legislation.

Can you clarify the point you’re making here or state it in a different way? I interpreted this to mean that you were endorsing the position that “I’ll support the legislation, but I’m not gonna change until everyone has to because I’d be at a disadvantage”. The goalie analogy reinforced this especially re: disadvantage.

I agree that my interpretation sounds uncharitable, but I’m struggling to find the charitable interpretation. If you’re raising a pure hypothetical, i.e. “this is something that humans can technically do”, I don’t disagree, but I’m struggling to understand the relevance in that case, and would genuinely like to understand.

> I’m saying “we should all collectively decide we want to ban single use plastic.” I don’t know how you interpreted the comment otherwise.

For some reason, this is definitely not what I took away from the parent comment, and wouldn’t have responded the way I did if that’s what I thought you were trying to say.

My point is that I support legislation that would ban single use plastic, but I don’t necessarily avoid single use plastic in my daily life. This “pattern” shouldn’t be assumed to extend to every facet of my life: I don’t make all my decisions this way.

> It’s an unsustainable mindset that would regularly encourage unethical/immoral but otherwise legal actions.

This was the unnecessary bit for me. You don’t need to invoke a slippery slope here, I’m not saying I make all my decisions this way.

To get more specific about this issue, I don’t bother avoiding single use plastic because doing so is damned near impossible, and I’ve given up trying. See sibling comments about Halloween/etc which articulate the difficulty better than I can. What I do understand is that if we enacted laws [0] which ban single use plastic at the supply side, this problem would largely disappear on the demand side… suddenly I’d go to the store and Halloween candy would be sold by the bag and I could give trick or treaters scoops of it, etc. Thus, my point is that I do a selfish thing (buy Halloween candy that uses single use plastic) but would support legislation that would ban this, specifically because it would make it easier for me to do the right thing.

The goalie analogy is imperfect because it invokes “disadvantage” in the argument, but that’s not really relevant to the point, so I admit the analogy isn’t great. But the larger point it speaks to is this:

Just because I act a certain way individually doesn’t mean I wouldn’t support broader action (ie. legislation) that would make me act a different way. Because my decisions aren’t made in a vacuum, they’re made in context of my broader environment, like for instance what kind of candy packaging actually exists at the store.

[0] by voting, indirectly through representatives, so please don’t invoke the “but government is supposed to by the people, not control the people” argument either, because it’s not relevant here. “Supporting legislation” means “I, a citizen, would consent to this and I hope others do too.”

Agreed. It's arguably legislation that added all the traffic signs around SF and it's individuals that decide to ignore all of them. Every time I go out I see cars turning left on Mission between 14th and 28th (no lefts on Mission allowed in that entire section). I see them driving north on Mission through 20th and 16th, both of which have signs and road markings "right turn only". I see them turn right at "no right on red" stop signs, many of which have 3 different signs. A painted sign, a red right arrow, an LED red right arrow with the no circle mark ⊘ over it. They still turn right. There's also 50% of the cyclists on Valencia that go through read lights.

The cucumber plastic is really helpfull to not loose too much cucumber, it prevent dehydratation, this way it can last almost a month. And losing cucumber mean you are wasting fuel on all the "processing" and transport.

That said, a change in the process is possible, which prove your point of "individual change is near-impossible and pointless".

How does your cucumber last a month?! In particular cucumbers tend to get bad within a few days for us, which is very frustrating.

You buy cucumber that might have left the crop since +20 days already.

I’ve only ever seen the long, skinny “Persian” cucumbers in plastic and don’t buy them for that reason (maybe I should). Regular “fat” and pickle cucumbers are rarely in plastic, if ever.

English cucumbers are usually wrapped in plastic because they have a thin skin and it helps keep in moisture, and it extends the shelf life.

Yes, not all cucumber are in plastic for various reasons. If plastic could be avoided, producers would avoid it as it don't bring any advantage from a marketing pov (aka it's not sexy like a cereal box is).

Gotta learn to eat vegetables in time, maybe?

I get mine weekly from my local farmer and I live in the inner city of Paris. There's zero waste because we only get what he harvests. Each basket covers a week.

The vast majority of food demands in urban population centers cannot be met by small farm operators, for scalability and price reasons. There are also a number of foodstuffs that can either never be provided by local farmers, or can only occasionally produced due to climate reasons. This is as true of "nice to have" goods as it is staple crops like wheat or rice. Resorting to sources that are further away and require extra measures to preserve freshness and ensure the items survive transport is something we will never escape from given global population size, the bias towards city settlement, and diet preferences.

Of course it's better this way. But I don't see it possible for everyone as it's not compatible with big cities.

You can actually just buy the fruits and vegetables without putting them in a plastic bag. It gets some weird looks, but it's perfectly fine most places.

And as far as things like Halloween, it's not hard to get kids onboard with various projects and let them come up with solutions to things. "Less processed candy" wouldn't be a bad thing in our society. Though quite a bit of candy is a waxed paper wrap.

He means they come pre-wrapped in plastic. Like a shrink wrapped box would in the electronics department. Not raw veggies you put into a bag yourself.

I'm not referring to the plastic bags that you put your own vegetables in, I mean that at many groceries, including the one near me, these vegetables come prepackaged by the store/distributor and you don't have a choice to buy 10 loose raw potatoes or a whole corn-on-the-cob in a raw husk.

Of course it depends on the store - but then do I drive an extra 15 mins (and emit all that carbon...) just to go to a different store with some loose veggies?

Oh... weird. I've never run into that, but I'm out in something closer to farm country than I expect a lot of people are (it's a short walk from my place to active farm fields).

I think the right answer, if you're in that sort of plastic hellscape, is to find your local community agriculture box sort of projects, and get fresh things in a recyclable cardboard box. Though I would also consider "not shopping at the place you mention and explaining to a manager why."

you do all your shopping at trader Joe's?

My Trader Joe's has all sorts of loose (non-wrapped) fruits and veggies.

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