What simple thing can you do to lessen your impact on the environment?

[Chips]

The impact of Fair Trade on a global scale is tiny. A couple of thousand producer organisations certified, a tiny fraction of goods trade even to rich Western nations affected, never mind considering global trade as a whole, and questions over the impact it has even on producers that have signed up. Is it a good thing anyway? Probably. But a useful comparison to stopping climate change? Only in the sense that it's a great example of a popular citizen-led action campaign achieving small gains over the course of a lot of years, which is about what we've managed against climate change... but civilisation isn't gonna end because Fair Trade hasn't reached enough people, and there's no deadline for it either.

I stopped replying, but coming back to read this...

but civilisation isn't gonna end because Fair Trade hasn't reached enough people

Jesus Christ. It's impossible. It's not mentioned as soluti... oh forget it. I stopped reading the rest of the post(s) simply as we're on entirely different planets as to what we mean and it has nothing to do with the thread either. Global warming is something shoehorned into this...

Unrelated to RA's post, but the thread wasn't about saving the world, it's about lessening impact of an individual (to the environment) - by whatever means. I contributed to that but then by responding to those determined to drag it away from the point I've also exacerbated the issue as well :/

It'd have been nice to read "simple things" that could be shared, and then have the discussion about the point of living / global warming, or anything in another topic that doesn't make this a clusterf of opinions (absolutely not referring to red assassin whatsoever in this statement!) but not actually relevant!

[pjknibbs]

" .. 48-72 plastic bottles to the landfill a month on average .." You can recycle plastic bottles if you want to enough. Especially as natural land erosion over time can mean that landfill does not stay as landfill in some places.

It's not even really a matter of "wanting to enough", because most councils that I'm aware of provide a recycling bin specifically for plastic bottles and the like, so literally all you need to do is put the bottles into a different container. It's hardly a massive effort, is it?

[Mightysword]

" .. 48-72 plastic bottles to the landfill a month on average .." You can recycle plastic bottles if you want to enough. Especially as natural land erosion over time can mean that landfill does not stay as landfill in some places.

It's not even really a matter of "wanting to enough", because most councils that I'm aware of provide a recycling bin specifically for plastic bottles and the like, so literally all you need to do is put the bottles into a different container. It's hardly a massive effort, is it?

Yes I do put them in the recycle bin (the city gives every house hold two carts, one for garbage one for recycle).

[Alan Phipps]

I mentioned 'want to [recycle] enough' because some more remote communities do not enjoy door-to-door recycling collection. I was on holiday in a coastal area in Cornwall UK where neither paper/cardboard, plastic nor glass could easily be recycled without you first delivering it somewhere else. They did have landfill refuse collection though.

[fiksal]

Do your towns do organic/compost bins?

Where I live now has slowly spread into my area and this is the first for me. Apparently it's now more common than I thought, yet it was surprising to me.

[Mightysword]

Do your towns do organic/compost bins?

They have it in large public place, like campus ground, food court or plaza.

[Gavrushka]

Do your towns do organic/compost bins?

Where I live now has slowly spread into my area and this is the first for me. Apparently it's now more common than I thought, yet it was surprising to me.

My County Council offer a fortnightly garden waste collection service, but it's chargeable. I live too far down a cul de sac for the collection wagon, however, thus I've bought a few myself.

What boils my piss is some neighbours do a weekly trip in their car to the local composting facility with just a bag or two of grass for company. They have a misplaced sense of wellbeing that they're saving the environment.

[Alan Phipps]

An associated environmental issue is illegal fly-tipping rather than proper recycling/composting/disposal. Typically there are one of four main reasons given by identified sources to *try* to justify this most antisocial of behaviours:

1. Sheer idleness.
2. The Council charges to collect it or receive it.
3. The Council will not take it (unacceptable, commercial or bulky waste).
4. It was taken away by an *assumed* responsible agency who just dumped it to save profit.

I have seen Councils have 'amnesty' weekends though where you can bring in certain types of items that they would not normally take and they will be checked and sorted/disposed of by experts for free (some examples being garden/domestic chemicals, paints, oils and spirits). They were quite successful and were worth the cost to the taxpayer in my opinion.

[Antilogic]

This news article seems appropriate: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49280709

[fiksal]

This news article seems appropriate: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49280709

thanks!

I wish there was a some sort of automated feedback system connected to what we leave in recycle, compost or trash for that matter. I feel like I just guess sometimes or often.

[pjknibbs]

My County Council offer a fortnightly garden waste collection service, but it's chargeable.

Mine does that for free...would be nice if they were consistent about this sort of thing.

[Observe]

One of the downsides of recycling plastic, is a lot of it gets shipped overseas for processing by cheap labor. Until recently, China was one of those countries, but they now have a ban on foreign garbage. The same is true of garbage from The United States.

This practice is creating mountains of toxic materials in countries that have no or low regulations. Malaysia is now the worlds largest dumping ground for this stuff. It actually might be more environmental friendly, to just bypass our recycling bins and simply send everything to a local landfill. Someone could probably do the math.

[Mightysword]

One of the downsides of recycling plastic, is a lot of it gets shipped overseas for processing by cheap labor. Until recently, China was one of those countries, but they now have a ban on foreign garbage. The same is true of garbage from The United States.

This practice is creating mountains of toxic materials in countries that have no or low regulations. Malaysia is now the worlds largest dumping ground for this stuff. It actually might be more environmental friendly, to just bypass our recycling bins and simply send everything to a local landfill. Someone could probably do the math.

The worse part is when the contractors try to bait and switch the content of the trash. Instead of shipping recyclable material per contract, these companies mix the content with the unrecylable trash and bundle it to these countries. Duterte (Philippine) earlier in the year throw a huge fit over it, questionable antic aside he did manage to get the original country to take back ~70 containers of trash. And who is this country? Canada, your supposed environmental friendly nation. I think Malaysia just did the same.

It's also noted that while Canada may sound like it's taking the lead on the "environmental friendly initiative" on the "news" front, its practical record isn't really that hot comparing to other developed country. This is why I bring up the issue of "paying money to simply shift the problem out of sight" and stat padding for bragging right. We might often think "it's thanks to our policy that our environment has improved", while that may help "a little", the real impact is the industry doesn't get cleaner, the polluted one just got moved to other places out of view. China's today looks about the same as the US decades away when we used to have polluting stream of smog screen so thick you can't even see the city coming down from the mountain (Colorado reference).

And it's the samething with China, as its own environment policy get stricter, it simply means it started exporting pollution elsewhere. A few years ago Vietnam had a big social unrest going on for awhile stemming from this issue. China paid some "grease" money to government official to give them the right to build polluted factories with almost no regulation for (and you gonna laugh) 100 years. China built these fabs and practically dumped untreated industrial waste into the stream and ocean front. Only took about 3 months for the pollution to completely wiped out several hundred-years-old fishing villages, which caused people to riot. Some poor fishermen dived naked into the polluted stream to take evidence of the pipes (because on the official paper these are all SOA factories that produce treated and safe waste only). Poor blokes died soon after to poisoning, sadly in vain.

That's why even though I know I may sound a bit callous\skeptic\cynical on these issues, but reality kinda make me annoy when people praise countries like China or Canada simply due to the PR effort. Environmental issue is a big umbrella that you can just hope to solve just by some point to point or pocket of problems. You simply shifting it around why giving the fail sense of belief that something was actually done. Give it a few decades, once the QoL is improved there (when people stop worry about what to eat, they gonna start wondering why the hell they're breathing fuel), these things gonna disappeared from E and SE Asia, and we would all be praise how far the region would have come in term of environmental issues. The polluters just simply be shifted to South Asia instead, and hey, Africa is still largely untouched, so I figure it'll get its turn.

[RegisterMe]

So what are you going to do?

Any ideas for the rest of us to think about?

[Mightysword]

So what are you going to do?

Any ideas for the rest of us to think about?

Be "conscious" about your action is the git of it, put some thought to it, don't just follow trend blindly, think about the net effect. Examples:

- Colorado imports something like in the upper 90% of the food consumed. And that's when we only had 5m people in the state, no idea where the number is now after the pot growth spurt. Given that fact, initiative to encourage people to eat locally, backyard garden like the one I have, grow locally (we have several large scale -almost self-sustain aquaponic farms around the state, those should be invested and multiplied) probably do more good for the environment than asking people getting an electric car when 70% of the grid draws from fossil fuel source.

- On the other hand, I'm not sure a backyard garden gonna do anything for the environment for someone live in California or Florida if not hurting it, given products are already produced locally on large scale.

- And if you live in one of the upper Western state or around DC, knock yourself out with an electric car, because those states already have a pretty green energy infrastructure.

Oh, and please don't drive people away from the cause or make them jaded by extreme message.

And when in doubt, just grow a tree.

[Gavrushka]

I think part of the problem, and someone touched on it earlier in this thread, is that people don't care. Many feel disenfranchised, others simply don't appreciate that individual efforts (be it in lifestyle changes or voting habits) really are a far more powerful weapon than we believe.

So perhaps the simplest thing any of us can do to lessen our impact on the environment is to just act, even if we believe it's pointless.

And imprison politicians who make faux promises, especially where they impact the quality of our/our children's lives.

[RegisterMe]

It's late, and I've not looked into it properly yet, but this looks interesting:-

https://www.ecosia.org/?c=en

(apparently it's a search engine that puts 80% of its profits into tree planting)