this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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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.
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.
What's worse is we haven't replaced plastic straws with a good alternative. Paper straws fucking blow and I'm not going to carry around and wash a silicon straw with me at all times.
*Silicone. Silicone is rubber, silicon is a crystal.
Maybe MeatsOfRage is just really fancy? 😁
I mean, one alternative that you are carrying around at all times is your mouth. It's very rare that a straw is needed at all.
They had acrylic straws back in the 80s FFS, this isn't hard.
Or you could just not use a straw, only babies need them.
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 🥲
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.
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