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Comment by fractallyte | Hacker News Reader

I've been down this road before, and been brutally downvoted, but I'll say it again:

- corporations are responsible for creating products which can be recycled;

- the consumer is responsible for proper disposal of their waste, and also for electing officials who have actual policies on reducing or eliminating pollution;

- local government is responsible for setting up recycling centers, and for enforcing correct behavior in consumers.

The consumer is at the bottom of all this, directly responsible for polluting the environment.

Oft-stated opinions like yours are lazy and ignorant.

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It’s not a radical thought to hold corporations accountable after they have limited our choices and controlled markets. So many things most Americans buy are manufactured needs so built into the culture that we think we need it. Proctor and gamble have written books about strategy that synthesize a market.

ok, but I find this simplification to be what is lazy. Obviously the world isn't as clear cut as only those 3 groups as if they're not intertwined.

And what does "directly responsible for polluting the environment" even mean? If I pay someone to take my trash out and throw it in the ocean am I all of a sudden excempt because I'm not the one "directly" polluting?

Pollution comes from a complex system so it has to be solved as such. Blaming individual participants (specially the ones with less money and power) is reducing the responsability of the rest which is the perfect excuse to do nothing

I'm furious because I see a non-stop behavior of consumers dumping their garbage, either in nature, or in municipal waste sites next to bins because they're too goddamned lazy to literally lift up their arms - let alone not sorting garbage for recycling.

And this is in a major city in middle Europe, one of the centers of "civilization".

If it's this bad here, what must it be like in countries with less developed social and economic systems?

This is the core of consumer responsibility, and it's a dismal failure.

dudes never heard of industrial waste :D ^^^ ?

That's a whole other argument about which I have even stronger opinions - namely about the dismal failure of government, and the flaws in our democratic systems that allow corporations to infiltrate governments and manipulate policies.

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