Apple: We’re changing everyone’s charging schedules to make electricity 0.00001% greener.
Also Apple: Titanium, so pretty. Even though it’s dirtier to mine.
Again Apple: We’re making everything irrepairable.
Apple: “Look, we made an ad with a woman depicting mother nature. Look at how self-aware and quirky we are.”
Me: (writes a short fanfic of mother nature beating Tim Cook up so bad, it might look like a Family Guy cutaway)
This resonates hard. Also incredibly fun to watch companies get to abuse loop holes and continue operations as always, then get told we need to sell our cars and turn off our heating to survive this environmental disaster.
Stainless steel straws for the win.
I feel like this is a whoosh. The environmental impact of our collective straw use is so insignificant compared to the effects of so many other things. The fact that people focus on straws is just evidence that the average person has no idea what to do, in order to decrease their environmental impact and will also complain about the mildest of inconveniences.
Think it’s moreso evidence that the propaganda machine works
Bruh didn’t you see above you that the chick can suck off a mean thick smoothie??
I don’t use straws at all, but this isn’t really the point. There are much more impactful ways to reduce your carbon footprint like biking, walking, public transport, but all this pales in comparison in the massive environmental pollutions that billionaires and corporations do to our waterways and air.
I like using straws, and stainless is a really pleasant straw experience ; you can slurp up really thick smoothies, for example.
I’m hyping stainless for the experience.
I prefer gravity straws. You just put the cup above your head and tilt the cup for the drink to pour in a straight line to your mouth.
I keep mine in the car
ANY effective, long-term collective change REQUIRES that the large majority of people CHANGE THEIR CONSUMPTION HABBITS. While not great, the private plane stuff is exactly as pointless as the paper straws. Both are ways for everyone to point the finger at everyone else, and not have to change.
If the government implemented the “correct” laws tomorrow, but the populace doesn’t want to change their habits, they will vote in people that give them back their old, bad things.
If a company implemented to “correct” processes, but the consumers don’t want to pay the necessary price, they go bankrupt, and the company with the “incorrect, but cheap” processes wins.
ALL COLLECTIVE ACTION IS A COLLECTION OF INDIVIDUAL CHANGE. There is no alternative!
You don’t solve this by just recycling harder - you solve this with legislative intervention to minimise packaging, ban private jets, retire fossil fuels, and stop massive food waste.
Pointing your finger at the masses and demanding they muster the will to change enough that entire supply chains are forced to retool entirely is naiive to the point of stupidity - people will go for cost and convenience just as predictably as companies will burn down the world for an extra dollar. The systemic change makes that shift quickly and (for the consumer) easy.
Bollocks! If every private jet is grounded there’s no amount of paper straws that can match that impact.
There’s still individual changes that impact more than the collective ones!
I can’t argue with that. There needs to be immediate change on all fronts.
This means that I wont suck on a paper straw while mr CEO flies in his private jet. Dead easy.
So far, there have mostly been changes that target the lives of people who already have a small CO2 footprint. I don’t even own a car for example.
The mere existence of private jets is an atrocity while the „lesser“ of us need to invest time and effort to change their ways.
https://greenisthenewblack.com/private-jets-are-uncool-environmentally/
Obviously, there are those of us who like to leave their v8 running while in the grocery store and they absolutely need to stop. No emptying the ashtray on the street or going to starbucks every day and get a one use cup every time. But still, I‘m done listening to people telling me I‘m not doing enough.
This is why we are doomed.
It drives me crazy, this performative enviornmentalist bullshit. I have to pay 10c (on top of 300% food cost increase don’t forget) for a plastic bag at the grocery when i forget my canvas ones. In these bags i must pay for i can place fruit individually wrapped in plastic.
Every time something gets worse, we must be the ones to pay. This whole environment-saving-by-paper-straw phenomenon is so insipid that I would rather believe that it’s actually a deliberate corporate strategy. At least that would make sense. If they keep us thinking that something is being done, they don’t have to change a thing, and if it’s “all of our jobs” (read: not theirs), to save the world, we’ll never take them to task for their (greater) part of the waste.
It is actually a deliberate corp strategy. Plastic straws were never a real concern, save for that ONE turtle. Plastic straw make such a negligible amount of plastic waste that stop using it will have virtually zero measurable impact in amount of plastic waste we create. All it ever was intended for was to make us feel like something was being done while doing absolutely nothing.
That’s not to say all plastic reduction initiatives are pointless. But the straws definitely belong in the least environmentally impactful category.
All it ever was intended for was to make us feel like something was being done while doing absolutely nothing.
It certainly does help a little bit. But it’s of course still not a coincidence that companies are pushing for it instead of more effective measures… It’s not just cheap but it also pushes people to believe that measures to save the environment are all useless and annoying, and makes them less likely to want more to happen.
It’s the “thoughts and prayers” of environmentalism. I’m convinced the net effect is negative after you factor in the way it distracts people from anything that might actually help.
Let’s not forget tht half the time they’re individually wrapped… in plastic.
Can we use Lemmy to figure out what should be done, push for that change, and bring plastic straws back?
Fund a grassroots media campaign advocating to make corporations pay to fix the environment and for price control laws to stop them passing on costs to the consumer.
At some point, people are going to have to accept their legal systems have been completely broken by regulatory capture and that they’re going to have to go to war to implement new governments that actually will do what the people want them to do. That’s the real talk that needs to happen
Companies already buy “carbon offsets” or whatever that shitbis called - essentially, they pay money to another businnes, one that is supposed to somehow help the planet and the carbon dioxide increase, and then they just call it a day and slap some stickers on their stuff saying it’s all eco-friendly.
Big players have been at it for a long time to cover themselves from way more angles than we can think of. :(
This is also what many countries do to achieve their emission reduction targets.
Nothing beats collection of beer/cola can’s pull tabs for recycling competition at schools. That forces children to ask parents to buy more of the six packs so that they could have the tabs.
oh god I never even thought about that. my childhood is ruined, thanks 🥲
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You’re treating it like a hypothetical but that is in fact exactly what’s going on.
Corporations and the politicians they own are hyperfocused on (relativee to centralised) inefficient end user recycling and regular people taking responsibility for the environment and climate change to distract from the fact that maybe 95%+ of it are the fault of corporations, not their customers.
Even consumer waste is many times worse than it would be if companies didn’t for example use all that plastic and design electronics to become obsolete if functional at all in as little as a single year just to squeeze as much money out while spending as little as possible.
I would rather believe that it’s actually a deliberate corporate strategy.
as is almost all suffering under capitalism - it is indeed a feature, not a bug
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/capitalism-is-killing-the-planet-its-time-to-stop-buying-into-our-own-destruction
Or simply drink like a fucking adult
In my experience, women tend to opt for straws when wearing lipstick and everyone opts for them when too much ice gets in the way of a good sip.
Uness you’re driving or something. But yes, you really don’t need a straw when you’re at McDonalds.
In my country, McDonald’s stopped using straws completely. And boasts about the tons of plastic per year they don’t waste anymore.
Probably only because govt banned staws. Or requires high taxes.
did they replace it with plastic sippable lids (like the ones for coffee)?
Nope, no straws no lids. Just a classic McDonald’s open paper cup.
good
You’re talking about two different ways to screw the environment. One is the rampant plastics pandemic, the other is carbon emissions. Paper straws are meant to combat the first, not the second.
While that’s true, I think the complaint here is that the the law deliberately harms poor people only. Instead of banning individual plastic applications, we should be taxing literally all plastics and letting consumers decide what’s worth it. And if we are to take a case-by-case class warfare approach, we should be going after the excesses of the wealthy - like private jets.
It’s not that they’re the same thing, it’s that they both hurt the environment and are treated very differently.
Wait till they find out what plastic is made out of and how that impacts carbon emissions.
Not only the billionaires, even the millionaires, and all the people taking the plane more than once a year. It is an ecological crime the pollution of air transport.
fun fact. modern planes consume ~3-4l per 100 passengers per km or 3-4l per passenger per 100km.
efficient ICE cars consume ~6l per passenger per 100km.
add to that, that there’s basically no good alternative to fast very long distance or cross-continent transport
Edit #2: ICE is a type of train in germany. I mistook “ICE cars” as meaning trains and was wondering how flying is supposed to be more efficient than trains. Hence my confusion.
OG comment (invalid, see Edit #2): Where are these numbers coming from?
I cannot find any source for the 3-4l/passenger/km claim. I cannot find any source for the claim that planes are more efficient. Nothing comes even near this claim.
https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/rail-and-waterborne-transport
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566
Can you please provide a source?
Edit #1: I just want to add that my old combustion car (VW Up! / Seat Mii / Skoda Citigo) burned around 4.2l/100km. So I according to you, if I had another person with me, I’d beat both planes and trains with what stands uncontested as the most inefficient form of transport?
Is that planes that are packed to the gills or private planes that actually have space that people aren’t crammed into?
Also, 3-4/6 liters of what? ICE cars and modern planes aren’t burning the same fuel, so I’m not sure what this is intending to portray by directly comparing how much of each (in liters) that they burn (serious question, no snark)
efficient ICE cars consume ~6l per passenger per 100km.
More like 6L per 100km, whatever the number of passengers, I suppose. So it’s usually still less than planes.
And there are better alternatives like trains or buses, which can be actually efficient for long distance travels (high speed trains, night travel. Works well from city centre to city centre)
There is also the additional issue of contrails which are a massive factor of greenhouse effect
This ICE car consumes 0.15-0.2l per passanger per 100km
One plane flight a year? What if I want to return home the same year?
You don’t, wait the next year or don’t leave home.
The trick is to go a week before new year’s
But the foreign country only lets me stay for 3 months, and in any case I only get 4 weeks leave
asdfasfasfasdf
Yeah gotta agree with you. I have to fly a good amount, both families live over 2000 miles away, it’s unavoidable. But I change what I can in society, I am switching to an EV, I pay extra on my electricity to pay for green sources, and I overall try to lower my carbon footprint.
As soon as they come out with an alternative fuel airline I’ll be flying on that as much as possible, but until there are alternatives I’m stuck flying.
What’s magical about that once-a-year limit? I find that quite a lot already.
Admittedly, I am one of those people taking a plane well over once a year, although I really rather wish I weren’t - I haven’t had a personal trip in over four years, it’s all onsite implementation.
Airyacht A880
Don’t use a straw at all; it’s less waste and more convenient
Name one time we solved a systemic problem through individual action. You solve systemic problems with systemic solutions.
i don’t know why they need to be mutually exclusive. individuals in communities with other individuals are what comprise a system. its all built from people.
Totally agree, everyone’s right! Our individual environmental impact is tied proportionally to our individual wealth, so anyone who isn’t exceptionally wealthy probably isn’t making an exceptional impact. Together though, the collective impact of everyone who don’t make an exceptional impact is exceptional. Now if only environmental and social responsibility were proportional to wealth too, but they seem to be inversely related, at least in my opinion.
100% convinced our decedents will look back in this age and laugh 2 things : domestic recycling as an attempt to save the the planet , and the fact that we did nothing unless there was a profit in it.
I don’t even want a straw, I prefer drinking from the side of the cup and save the environment even a little more bringing my own fave cup and asking for no straw!
And yes, billionaires really do go brrr while I do all this
“Airbus baluga” will now be stuck in my head to the tune of “baby baluga” all night, tyvm
