this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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aurgh, no
plastics in the environment is clearly a separate issue to climate change, i don't understand why people INSIST on conflating them and acting as if not wanting straws in the forest is somehow a distraction tactic..
Corporations are responsible for climate change, but individuals are responsible for littering and that littering is to a large degree solved by making things that break down quickly.
But the corporations are selling us the litter.
Of course it's not okay to throw your trash out in nature, no argument here. The source of that problem is corporations, though. They produce stupid packaging and tools made out of cheap plastic that is bad for the environment. It happens due to the same greed that causes climate change.
Corporations are directly responsible for their product, the trash they create and their impact on the environment.
Don't let them tell you otherwise, because that's what they are trying to do.
Corporations could've been growing bamboo and making straws out of them for decades, they chose plastic because it was cheaper. They very much has a significant role to play in this.
I don't entirely disagree about there being a profit motive, because there is always a profit motive, but I would also like to point out that there is a very real and mostly ignored group of people, who the single use bendy straw was invented for, that not only need but depend on single use plastic straws to live (and no, the alternatives aren't good enough source), so there is a legitimate and important use for them, that anyone might end up relying on.
And also that plastic straws were never actually a problem, they consist of 0.003% of plastics in the ocean, and their banning only took off because there was a sad photo of a cute turtle and it require zero effort from those who don't actually need them to get that feel good "I'm helping!" boost, even though they weren't helping at all (and actively hurting disabled people).
The perfect illustration of this is the fact that in comparison, garbage from fishing makes up a whopping 46% of the plastic in the ocean, and there are many, horrible rather than cute-sad, photos of turtles in nets, yet doing anything about that, like stopping eating sea food, is something most people will adamantly refuse to even talk about, let alone do.
It's "fuck you got mine" at its finest.
I hear you, but we could use hemp plastic for that our disabled friends and family, couldn't we?
I also hear you that it was escalated beyond what it should be, but at the same time, every little helps.
As for fishing position, they should go back to hemp nets.
You're missing the point.
You don't solve systemic problems with individual solutions.
It not only doesn't work, but is actively counterproductive - while people are busy policing others' use of plastic or water or individual brands or whatever, and then patting themselves on the back for "saving the planet" by taking actions that have the impact of a drop in a thousand oceans, the corporations and the people behind them continue to rip us all off and destroy the planet in ways that we could absolutely never impact with individual choices.
Stop suggesting hemp, start suggesting abolishing capitalism. Anything else is enabling the status quo.
But what i'm trying to get accross is that it's not about turtles in the ocean, it's about having trash in the forest i very much visit myself. It directly affects ourselves!
It's extremely disingenous to say that this is just some virtue-signaling issue, that's just straight up false.
Right so what's the problem with decomposable stuff again? How is that not just solving the issue?
Most of the plastic doesn't end up in the environment (at least in Europe and I assume in the US too). Plastic Trash (especially the cheap plastic composite type) is mostly burned and the CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Needless plastic usage has a direct effect on the climate.
Must be different in sweden then, here there's a pretty significant issue with garbage on the countryside since people will buy stuff like mcdonalds and just toss the trash out the car window.
Making those things out of paper has vastly improved things, people still insist on littering but at least now the trash turns to slush after a rainshower so it doesn't continue building up indefinitely. (I will also give props to fast food places, they have made most things from paper for as long as i can remember, it seems we just needed to give them a firm boot in the ass to make them change the more difficult stuff too)
Next i wish we could improve the packaging for things like chocolate bars, that's by far the most common type of trash to see caught up in shrubs near where people spend a lot of time in cities.
Things can be problematic in many different ways. The fact that the vast majority of plastic lands in the bin, doesn't implie that the part that lands in the environment isn't a problem.
Ironically in this case both problems can be solved by similar measures, like your example.
Killing the stuff that scrubs co2 into oxygen isn't part of it? How do corporations exist if nobody is buying from them bc of their practices?