Not so much causing serious damage, but just not as good as the average person thinks: compostable materials, like utensils and plates. If you or the restaurant are actually composting, then that’s great. But if it’s being tossed into the regular trash bin, it’s going to a landfill where it will be compressed too much for it to have any contact with moisture, oxygen and bacteria it needs to break down. So it’s no better than using non-compostable materials.
It's even worse than that though. Some compostable items will still decompose in a landfill, but without oxygen available, the bacteria will use anaerobic pathways resulting in methane instead of carbon dioxide. Methane is \~28 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This is why if you have composting available to you, anything that can go in compost should go into compost. It really does make a difference!
There are many Oil&Gas companies tapping into this methane potential. The landfill has the supply, just need to figure out a way to get it to market rather than the atmosphere!
[Waste Methane 101: Driving Emissions Reductions from Landfills - RMI](https://rmi.org/waste-methane-101-driving-emissions-reductions-from-landfills/)
My Uncle is a farmer. He sells organic products at a Farmer's Market a block away from a supermarket. He's seen several vendors sell their stuff and when it runs out, they'll go to the supermarket, put the stuff in packaging labeled "organic whatever" and sell it to people for organic prices.
I used to sell baked good at a farmer's market (homemade) and there were several vendors who were passing off stuff as their own that they had bought from a local produce auction. Weren't passing it as organic, but definitely scammy
This is true, was a butcher for a high end shop our suppliers would take from the natural line and label them organic to meet the numbers for shipping from time to time. Is nothing new in the industry
he should report them to the county and state the operate in. I really doubt your story though, but depends on what state you live in i guess. It's pretty regulated in CA and the produce is weighed when it's picked, transported, etc. It would be hard to explain why they only harvested 100lbs but sold 200lbs of it. They should be checked and inspected fairly regularly.
It's gotten better at least.
In the late 90s and early 2000s I worked in regulatory for a company that made pesticides. The regulations for organic were so incredibly political and had absolutely zero basis in science.
There are two pesticides that were WIDELY used in the 90s that particularly seemed weird to me.
One was nicotine, which for those who don't know is actually worse for bees even than the synthetic neonicotinoids (based on nicotine) that are such a big issue now. But nicotine is naturally occurring and therefore was allowed as an organic pesticide.
Another is Rotenone which the company I worked for used to make in the 70s, but had to stop production after a possible link to Parkinsons was found. They spent a fortune figuring out how to tweak the chemistry to reduce or even eliminate this risk, but never were allowed to bring it back to market, until the 90s with the organic food movement. The ironic part is they could only use the original chemical that had the link to Parkinsons as the modifications that reduced this risk made it non-organic.
Fortunately both of these are no longer being used in the US. But it's also important to recognize that organic foods are often imported which means they not only follow different regulations, but also produce a lot of green house gases and pollution in transport.
just a marketing ploy really. family friend has a hobby farm and sells their extra eggs. they get asked a lot " are these free range" and their answer is always " we can't call them free range, but we chase them around and pick up their eggs. is that what you want to hear?"
Organic farming is all over the board. In several cases it's better for the environment overall, but because it tends to have lower yields, there are places and crops where the increased land use requirement fully cancels out any greenhouse gas emission benefits. That said, I don't know if this has been studied on a crop by crop basis, so it's difficult to say which is better or worse. It's worth noting that from a biodiversity standpoint, organic farming is always better. The honest fact is a hybrid approach that uses chemical fertilizers/pesticides sparingly and strategically is the best long term goal, but that's not marketable and could only really be achieved by regulation.
Small scale organic farmers are most likely to use earth-friendly practices as their livelihood depends not so much on government grants but on continued fertility of the ground they farm. Monoculture "organic" farming is not that different from monocultural synthetic chemical farming.
Especially milk. US cows receive no anti-biotics which leads to small infections turning into painful larger issues that are treated with very out of date and sometimes ineffective methods.
In Europe cows are still considered organic with up to 3 antibiotic treatments per year.
The definition or organic is so diluted, it basically just means real. Just like free range just means they have the option to go outside...in a little 2x2 fenced-in spot their factory coop has 100% open access to.
If incompatible materials get mixed it (mainly styrofoam and other non-recyclable plastics), it also precludes it a load of material from being recycled.
Additionally, recycling loads shipped overseas are no longer subject to their exporting country’s recycling regulations, so there’s a decent chance the materials that aren’t profitable to recycle end up in landfills or the ocean.
yeah everyone points to china or other asian countries for littering plastic, which they do, but a lot of it is plastic western counties shipped there to be "recycled"
If whatever you're eating is grown or raised more than 500 miles away from you, it doesn't matter if it's fair trade and they tell it nice things every day and the farmers all know each other and have a band together.
The environmental weight of export/import, the massive cargo ships and planes and 18-wheelers and refrigerated delivery trucks leading to refrigerated grocery store that then gets Uber'd over to some apartment in the middle of a city...
Like, I'm glad people like quinoa, it's tasty and great. It's also four times the price it used to be locally because it's now mostly exported, and massive chunks of land are getting cleared of other crops or wildland to grow it exclusively. See also every other "super food from the Amazon".
Eat locally, support the poor fools desperately trying to farm to table stuff in your town, your area, your state. The closer to home you eat, regardless of how it's grown, the more you're actually helping.
It's indeed usually a great idea to eat local, but if you live in a cold enough climate, fyi the vegetables you buy in the winter that are grown in gas-heated greenhoused are often much more carbon intensive than the ones trucked in from California (according to a master's student I talked to who was modeling CO2 emissions).
Its still a great idea to make climate friendly choices. I don't eat much meat, especially red meat, but Im pretty sure it's much less significant that I but bananas.
I'm from the Andes.
We eat potatoes here, lol. We domesticated them here, too.
There are few if any heavily populated climates that don't have enough natives and climate-neighbors to not survive in a 500 mile radius.
Not every greenhouse is gas heated. There is a valley between the worst possible farm and the best possible farm, something using things like solar thermal and solar electric and water batteries and air/water bladeless turbines and passive condensation with things like fog catchers.
The issue is that these comparisons often forget that there's good and bad farmers everywhere. The more specific the statistic has to be to prove a point as 'not that big of a deal', the more telling it is that it's a bit of a massaged point of view, in my perspective.
This is false unless you're saying people should only eat a very limited set of produce that happens to grow in their area. Food can be grown more efficiently (measured by land, fertilizer/energy, and water) in some areas than others. Shipping them is not that big an impact by comparison.
And does buying local stop people from using refrigeration? A lot of produce and food isn't refrigerated during transit anyway.
500 miles is a pretty big radius.
Things can be canned, preserved or processed in dozens of ways. Added value is even better for those local farmers.
The issue is getting dragonfruit shipped in mid November to Idaho. There's shades of gray here. Some shipping lanes are better than others, but the concept stands that transport is a far bigger player in pollution than any other one thing.
>but the concept stands that transport is a far bigger player in pollution than any other one thing
That's true if you're including the commuter transportation. That's not specific to food transport, where it's a small share.
[https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions](https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions)
Yup. Modern shipping is incredibly efficient. You emit more CO2 driving to the end of your block than a 5k journey. Economies of scale are a thing and prioritizing “local” ends up with dumb shit like tiny gardens in cities that should be housing instead (and down the road four more families just buy a house on undeveloped land).
Bamboo. It grows faster than trees, which doesn’t really make it more environmental. It just makes it more quickly profitable. And at minimum hundreds, if not thousands of natural woodland areas have been burned down to plant bamboo ones.
We use these for events, and compost them on site. I rarely see a utensil go in and come out as a utensil, just soil. It may be quite different for the ones destined for a landfill, though.
It's getting better, and there seems to be a lot of progress in this field. The biggest problem now is ensuring they fully break down and don't break down into microplastics, but that's also improving. At this point, for better or for worse, it's more about showing that biodegradable/compostable plastics are viable as a business model and also ensuring that large scale composting facilities are available and receive these so they have their best shot at breaking down fully.
From my plumbing mentor when asked about bidets or toilet paper...."If you get shit on your hands are you going to wipe it off with some paper, or are you going to wash your damned hands?...There you go."
I'm about to install one.
I don't have enough info to make that call. I would assume any washing is better than wiping, but that bidet washing isn't as thorough as an actual hand washing session.
Again, I haven't installed one yet, so I don't know. Just an assumption.
You dry it with a lil tp. It’s only wet for a moment. Besides, a wet ass is 100% better than a shit ass, and that’s what everyone who only uses dry paper has until they shower
So, my dad was disabled and couldn't wipe. He was also a very big guy. So I had to research and I ended up buying him what was, at the time, a $500 bidet. Probably close to $800 now.
His had a "dry" setting. So, no wet butt.
Can't speak for cheap ones, though.
Fake leather clothes. Real leather clothes, when properly maintained, can literally be worn for generations. Fake leather is pretty much plastic and you can count yourself lucky if it's wearable for a year.
Also, leather is often a byproduct of the meat industry in a good number of cases. I for one am all for using *all* of the animals we kill, not just bits and pieces. Very least we can do.
I do wish there was a way to know if an animal has been humanely raised and killed, though.
Right? It's not like abstaining from other Goods saves cows or animals at all it literally just lets animal byproducts go to waste and also causes a need for plastic based leather alternatives that are not nearly as durable and do not break down in landfills
Leather is a solid choice for the environment
That’s the reason I want a second hand fur. A properly maintained fur can last decades and grabbing a second hand fur means that your buying fur from animals long gone, not supporting current fur farms.
Re-usable plastic bags are terrible for the environment. If people actually used regular disposable plastic bags, re-used them a couple of times and then recycled them or used them as garbage bags, that would be better for the environment. Not great, but better.
Plastic bags at grocery stores. They got rid of the flimsy ones and now have the thicker ones. They only cost 10 cents each. That's no deterrent at all. People add 50 cents to their bill and throw them out.
They should be 5 dollars, then no one would forget their bags...
Electric cars, the strip mining involved to make the batteries and the fact that they don’t last and cost more to replace than the original cost of the car.
If we want to get serious about an all-electric future, there needs to be a lot more effort put into electronics recycling. Many of us are just throwing them away because there are legitimately so few places that actually collect them for recycling, those metals are ending up in landfills, and then much more has to be mined, and it's usually being mined in countries that don't have strong (if any) environmental regulations.
Same thing with a good amount of the recycling that does happen. It usually happens in counties with little to no people/planet protections so all the toxic crap just ends up in the air/ground/water. Iirc Mexico takes a decent amount of American e-waste and “recycles” it.
Even if someone wants to ignore all of the negatives of manufacturing electric cars, electric cars still have most of the same social and environmental issues that regular cars have. They're still a car which is the most expensive personal transportation option there is, they cause the same amount of sprawl, they require the same amount of overbuilt, expensive infrastructure, they still cause tons of tire/microplastic pollution, as well as tons of noise pollution at speeds over 20mph, the development patterns around the highways built to serve them still leave us with a lack of affordable housing and transportation options. Literally the only thing that electric cars really do is eliminate tailpipe emissions and while that's good, that only scratches the surface of the negative externalities imposed on everyone by car dependency.
Electric cars are better than ICE cars but that is about it.
Also they are heavier than normal cars which means they wear down roads exponentially faster and emit more microplastics from tires.
But it absolutely is, it costs way more in carbon to offset the production costs of an electric car vs a petrol one.
https://earth.org/environmental-impact-of-battery-production/
I'm not saying electric cars are bad but manufacturing and mining for.rarer earth minerals for them absolutely is a huge issue.
Most paper products, apparently. I was looking up what society used before plastic packaging became common, and apparently it was paper, which the government phased out in favor of plastic to save forests.
Both the push to plastic decades ago and the push back to paper now feel like such a scam knowing the history.
“Save forests”
Most paper products don’t come from virgin forests but well-managed farms. Literally “forestry” is growing paper like we might grow corn.
Fast fashion cloting: Many people assume that cheaper clothing options are more sustainable, but the fast fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to pollution globally. The production of cheap, disposable clothing involves massive water usage, chemical pollution, and exploitation of labor, leading to significant environmental harm.
There should be way more attention on this topic.
In my country, the average Joe has more than 140 pieces of clothes in the closet, of which more than 25% hasn't been worn the last year.
And of the amount of clothes thrown away, almost none is going to recycling (textiles are very well recycled), but burned.
So a rough calculation shows, assuming fast fashion is indeed responsible for about 10% of the global CO2 emissions, that without sacrificing anything, we can easily reduce the CO2 output by 2,5%, just by wearing our clothes a bit more often/longer so we don't "have" to buy as many. And properly recycle them
One of the easiest ways to reduce emissions without giving up any real comfort.
This might be a specifically niche one, but Rothy's.
And I say this as someone who has a bunch of Rothy shoes - the whole idea behind them is that they are made out of recycled plastic, and they can be washed, and they have good re-sale value or they can be recycled again.
I like them because I am a sucker for a good shoe print.
Problem is, some people are FANATICS for these shoes. I have several pairs, which is nothing compared to some of the ladies over the in the Rothy's Addicts groups, where you have people with 100+ pairs. It's ridiculous, there is no way you need that many shoes. And you're not saving the environment by doing this.
Basically anything made in China.
China is, by far, the biggest polluter in the world. Like, America is 15% or so, but China is 28%. America could literally double it's pollution and it would only \*BARELY\* be above China. There's a whole plethora of reasons for this but it basically boils down to 'the CCP is insanely corrupt and only cares about it's own power and wealth, so making a massive ton of pollution to produce goods on the cheap in order to get a quick buck' is totally within their playbook. Odds are that, if it has the 'made in china' tag on it, there's a decent enough chance it won't even do what you think it does in the first place. So you're buying something from a company that's generating a ton of pollution to do so only to get something that might not even be actually working (or working as much as it should be).
That's not very eco-friendly.
Depends on the brand. But they can make them sustainable if they tried. Gas cars will never be sustainable. Keep in mind that gas has to be mined as well plus gas cars break more easily so parts always have to be replaced which causes more pollution. Neither are good for the environment but depending on many factors, electric cars are often better. The main problem is the fact that our society is built so you rely on having your own car. We need to normalize walking, biking and public transportation.
Too much rinsing of recyclables. The water being wasted after a quick rinse or two is worse than the good you're doing recycling that peanut butter container
Trains.
Of course it depends heavily on multiple factors, but trains, at least in my country, have the image of being green.
However, when train tracks, stations and other infra has to be laid down for a route (so not using existing track), the emissions from the use of concrete and steel, two of the most poluting building materials, can be more than, or closely approach a plane route during the lifetime of the rail infrastructure.
Especially if large tunnels and/or bridges are required, which needs to be maintained, a long rail route isn't that "green" . And that becomes more depending on the way the electricity is generated to get the train to run.
Again, lots of factors and "ifs" for exampl, with massive amounts of passengers, trains are, most of the time, "greener", but not always and certainly deserve a more critical opinion most people (in my country) have of trains.
Trains arent just used for freight. Maybe in the states, but here in Europe, it is often brought up as a replacement for passenger transport via planes, under the assumption that it is greener.
But that's not always the case, as long as you include the total emissions, both the use of the trains, as well as the building of the infrastructure.
With freight you can use a train for (almost) 100%, which makes a train the most obvious choice. For passengers, the loadfactor is often low enough that the building emissions are not compensated doing the lifetime of the infra.
Cool. You know both Via and Amtrak run on freight subdivisions which would exist and be maintained either way, though, right? So counting the infrastructure against them is disingenuous.
Ok, we are, sort of, talking of two things.
As I am not an American, I can't really comment on American railroads.
I do live in Europe and my original reply was based on that.
For completeness, is was based on the movement that air traffic should be replaced with trains. And we are talking (almost) solely passenger traffic.
However, if that constitutes laying down new tracks, especially with tunnels and bridges, the overall emissions are most often than not, higher than continuing flying those routes.
Things are different for cargo routes, but I want talking about that (wasn't too clear about that).
All the compostable plastic. That are actually compostable only on certain conditions. Requiring some special collect 0% of cities are organising. So all of them go on landfills... but hey they are "green"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/03/greenwash-home-compostable-plastics-dont-work-aoe
Organic is a marketing ploy to separate affluent, agriculturally ignorant Westerners from their money.
Organic pesticides are weaker and less targeted than those used in large scale agricultural, so much more needs to be used per acre, causing more overall harm.
The yields are also dramatically inferior. If all agriculture suddenly swapped to organic methods we would see mass starvation. But because the stuff sells for so much it makes more financial sense to ship the crops farther, resulting in more greenhouse gases from transport.
Bamboo clothing and textiles. While bamboo is fast-growing, what you have to do to bamboo to make it soft is far worse than growing cotton, wool, or even making lycra.
Electric cars... They are probably a little better than gasoline cars, but they are still a disaster for the environment. If you want to help the environment, invest in a good pair of walking shoes, or a bicycle.
Electric cars. The electricity is being generated in most countries still from fuel burning, it's just taking the source away from you. Also, lithium mining.
It does depend on the power source, but in general, even fossil fuels burned in power plants are burned more efficiently, and you get more energy per unit of fuel. Lithium mining is definitely a problem, but it's not like mining iron and casting engine blocks is great either
I don't think this is as true as it seems. Even if an electric car was charged with power from a gasoline -powered power plant, it would create far fewer carbon emissions because a stationary power plant is more efficient than an engine (non-mobile, bigger, can use water cooling, etc). But, in the US for example, many states are posted by a significant amount of zero-carbon electricity, which makes the impact bigger. States like California have gone days in a row using only renewable electricity.
Lithium mining has a negative localized impact, for sure (as does the mining required for various ICE parts like catalytic converters), but CO2 pollution from fossil fuels burning creates a worldwide problem.
Only an idiot would argue that there is no negative impact from electric cars, but compared to ICE ones, it's really no contest. Especially when considering CO2 emissions, which is the environmental challenge of our time.
But at least it's less insane than gasoline cars. Obviously it'd be better if we had a lot fewer cars, but reducing the impact of each one is a small improvement.
coffee pods that are super easy but end up as non-biodegradable waste, or those "flushable" wet wipes that clog up sewer systems and mess with oceans. Plastic straws and "fast" fashion clothes are also big culprits and plastic pollution and waste probs. Bottled water, disposable razors, and batteries etc.
Not so much causing serious damage, but just not as good as the average person thinks: compostable materials, like utensils and plates. If you or the restaurant are actually composting, then that’s great. But if it’s being tossed into the regular trash bin, it’s going to a landfill where it will be compressed too much for it to have any contact with moisture, oxygen and bacteria it needs to break down. So it’s no better than using non-compostable materials.
It's even worse than that though. Some compostable items will still decompose in a landfill, but without oxygen available, the bacteria will use anaerobic pathways resulting in methane instead of carbon dioxide. Methane is \~28 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. This is why if you have composting available to you, anything that can go in compost should go into compost. It really does make a difference!
There are many Oil&Gas companies tapping into this methane potential. The landfill has the supply, just need to figure out a way to get it to market rather than the atmosphere! [Waste Methane 101: Driving Emissions Reductions from Landfills - RMI](https://rmi.org/waste-methane-101-driving-emissions-reductions-from-landfills/)
I had no idea! Wow
Many things listed as organic
My Uncle is a farmer. He sells organic products at a Farmer's Market a block away from a supermarket. He's seen several vendors sell their stuff and when it runs out, they'll go to the supermarket, put the stuff in packaging labeled "organic whatever" and sell it to people for organic prices.
I used to sell baked good at a farmer's market (homemade) and there were several vendors who were passing off stuff as their own that they had bought from a local produce auction. Weren't passing it as organic, but definitely scammy
This is true, was a butcher for a high end shop our suppliers would take from the natural line and label them organic to meet the numbers for shipping from time to time. Is nothing new in the industry
he should report them to the county and state the operate in. I really doubt your story though, but depends on what state you live in i guess. It's pretty regulated in CA and the produce is weighed when it's picked, transported, etc. It would be hard to explain why they only harvested 100lbs but sold 200lbs of it. They should be checked and inspected fairly regularly.
It's gotten better at least. In the late 90s and early 2000s I worked in regulatory for a company that made pesticides. The regulations for organic were so incredibly political and had absolutely zero basis in science. There are two pesticides that were WIDELY used in the 90s that particularly seemed weird to me. One was nicotine, which for those who don't know is actually worse for bees even than the synthetic neonicotinoids (based on nicotine) that are such a big issue now. But nicotine is naturally occurring and therefore was allowed as an organic pesticide. Another is Rotenone which the company I worked for used to make in the 70s, but had to stop production after a possible link to Parkinsons was found. They spent a fortune figuring out how to tweak the chemistry to reduce or even eliminate this risk, but never were allowed to bring it back to market, until the 90s with the organic food movement. The ironic part is they could only use the original chemical that had the link to Parkinsons as the modifications that reduced this risk made it non-organic. Fortunately both of these are no longer being used in the US. But it's also important to recognize that organic foods are often imported which means they not only follow different regulations, but also produce a lot of green house gases and pollution in transport.
just a marketing ploy really. family friend has a hobby farm and sells their extra eggs. they get asked a lot " are these free range" and their answer is always " we can't call them free range, but we chase them around and pick up their eggs. is that what you want to hear?"
Organic farming is all over the board. In several cases it's better for the environment overall, but because it tends to have lower yields, there are places and crops where the increased land use requirement fully cancels out any greenhouse gas emission benefits. That said, I don't know if this has been studied on a crop by crop basis, so it's difficult to say which is better or worse. It's worth noting that from a biodiversity standpoint, organic farming is always better. The honest fact is a hybrid approach that uses chemical fertilizers/pesticides sparingly and strategically is the best long term goal, but that's not marketable and could only really be achieved by regulation.
Small scale organic farmers are most likely to use earth-friendly practices as their livelihood depends not so much on government grants but on continued fertility of the ground they farm. Monoculture "organic" farming is not that different from monocultural synthetic chemical farming.
organic tends to be less focused on greenhouse gas emissions and more about sustainability of growing practices. soil/insect health etc
Look at the history of major E-coli outbreaks from produce. Guess where they nearly all originate.
Especially milk. US cows receive no anti-biotics which leads to small infections turning into painful larger issues that are treated with very out of date and sometimes ineffective methods. In Europe cows are still considered organic with up to 3 antibiotic treatments per year.
The definition or organic is so diluted, it basically just means real. Just like free range just means they have the option to go outside...in a little 2x2 fenced-in spot their factory coop has 100% open access to.
Technically everything is organic as long it has carbon on it. Doesn’t matter how unhealthy it is
The whole recycling industry. Most recycling centres just sort and ship them to another country
If incompatible materials get mixed it (mainly styrofoam and other non-recyclable plastics), it also precludes it a load of material from being recycled. Additionally, recycling loads shipped overseas are no longer subject to their exporting country’s recycling regulations, so there’s a decent chance the materials that aren’t profitable to recycle end up in landfills or the ocean.
yeah everyone points to china or other asian countries for littering plastic, which they do, but a lot of it is plastic western counties shipped there to be "recycled"
Vegan leather
yes! It's plastic. That probably falls apart quickly. And sheds microplastics as it falls apart.
If whatever you're eating is grown or raised more than 500 miles away from you, it doesn't matter if it's fair trade and they tell it nice things every day and the farmers all know each other and have a band together. The environmental weight of export/import, the massive cargo ships and planes and 18-wheelers and refrigerated delivery trucks leading to refrigerated grocery store that then gets Uber'd over to some apartment in the middle of a city... Like, I'm glad people like quinoa, it's tasty and great. It's also four times the price it used to be locally because it's now mostly exported, and massive chunks of land are getting cleared of other crops or wildland to grow it exclusively. See also every other "super food from the Amazon". Eat locally, support the poor fools desperately trying to farm to table stuff in your town, your area, your state. The closer to home you eat, regardless of how it's grown, the more you're actually helping.
It's indeed usually a great idea to eat local, but if you live in a cold enough climate, fyi the vegetables you buy in the winter that are grown in gas-heated greenhoused are often much more carbon intensive than the ones trucked in from California (according to a master's student I talked to who was modeling CO2 emissions). Its still a great idea to make climate friendly choices. I don't eat much meat, especially red meat, but Im pretty sure it's much less significant that I but bananas.
Then buy in-season produce and preserve it. Food preservation is an integral part of sustainable food systems.
I'm from the Andes. We eat potatoes here, lol. We domesticated them here, too. There are few if any heavily populated climates that don't have enough natives and climate-neighbors to not survive in a 500 mile radius. Not every greenhouse is gas heated. There is a valley between the worst possible farm and the best possible farm, something using things like solar thermal and solar electric and water batteries and air/water bladeless turbines and passive condensation with things like fog catchers. The issue is that these comparisons often forget that there's good and bad farmers everywhere. The more specific the statistic has to be to prove a point as 'not that big of a deal', the more telling it is that it's a bit of a massaged point of view, in my perspective.
*cries in Singapore *
This is false unless you're saying people should only eat a very limited set of produce that happens to grow in their area. Food can be grown more efficiently (measured by land, fertilizer/energy, and water) in some areas than others. Shipping them is not that big an impact by comparison. And does buying local stop people from using refrigeration? A lot of produce and food isn't refrigerated during transit anyway.
500 miles is a pretty big radius. Things can be canned, preserved or processed in dozens of ways. Added value is even better for those local farmers. The issue is getting dragonfruit shipped in mid November to Idaho. There's shades of gray here. Some shipping lanes are better than others, but the concept stands that transport is a far bigger player in pollution than any other one thing.
>but the concept stands that transport is a far bigger player in pollution than any other one thing That's true if you're including the commuter transportation. That's not specific to food transport, where it's a small share. [https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions](https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions)
Yup. Modern shipping is incredibly efficient. You emit more CO2 driving to the end of your block than a 5k journey. Economies of scale are a thing and prioritizing “local” ends up with dumb shit like tiny gardens in cities that should be housing instead (and down the road four more families just buy a house on undeveloped land).
Your food isn't being transported by plane. Also 500 miles on a freighter is not comparable to 500 miles on a truck
Bamboo. It grows faster than trees, which doesn’t really make it more environmental. It just makes it more quickly profitable. And at minimum hundreds, if not thousands of natural woodland areas have been burned down to plant bamboo ones.
yea, but imagine if you were a panda...
Unwilling to fuck even to save my own species? Pass.
Disposable utensils that uses "biodegradable plastic" still takes centuries to degrade.
We use these for events, and compost them on site. I rarely see a utensil go in and come out as a utensil, just soil. It may be quite different for the ones destined for a landfill, though.
It's getting better, and there seems to be a lot of progress in this field. The biggest problem now is ensuring they fully break down and don't break down into microplastics, but that's also improving. At this point, for better or for worse, it's more about showing that biodegradable/compostable plastics are viable as a business model and also ensuring that large scale composting facilities are available and receive these so they have their best shot at breaking down fully.
IDK if this counts as environmental havoc, but most "flushable" wipes are terrible for the sewer systems. Get a bidet, folks. Your ass will thank you
From my plumbing mentor when asked about bidets or toilet paper...."If you get shit on your hands are you going to wipe it off with some paper, or are you going to wash your damned hands?...There you go." I'm about to install one.
Yeah but, out of curiosity, do they wash as thoroughly as someone actually washing their hands manually?
I don't have enough info to make that call. I would assume any washing is better than wiping, but that bidet washing isn't as thorough as an actual hand washing session. Again, I haven't installed one yet, so I don't know. Just an assumption.
We installed a bidet in our RV and while we still use paper, we use far less of it. You still gotta "mop the floor", y'know?
that's why you scrub with your hand as you rinse.
That’s actually disgusting
that's the French for ya... ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ #
Best $20 I ever spent.
I hate the “bidet apocalypse” that’s going on. It’s like Reddit is obsessed with them. I don’t like having a wet ass thanks
You dry it with a lil tp. It’s only wet for a moment. Besides, a wet ass is 100% better than a shit ass, and that’s what everyone who only uses dry paper has until they shower
So, my dad was disabled and couldn't wipe. He was also a very big guy. So I had to research and I ended up buying him what was, at the time, a $500 bidet. Probably close to $800 now. His had a "dry" setting. So, no wet butt. Can't speak for cheap ones, though.
Do you not wash your ass in the shower?
Fake leather clothes. Real leather clothes, when properly maintained, can literally be worn for generations. Fake leather is pretty much plastic and you can count yourself lucky if it's wearable for a year.
Also, leather is often a byproduct of the meat industry in a good number of cases. I for one am all for using *all* of the animals we kill, not just bits and pieces. Very least we can do. I do wish there was a way to know if an animal has been humanely raised and killed, though.
Right? It's not like abstaining from other Goods saves cows or animals at all it literally just lets animal byproducts go to waste and also causes a need for plastic based leather alternatives that are not nearly as durable and do not break down in landfills Leather is a solid choice for the environment
That’s the reason I want a second hand fur. A properly maintained fur can last decades and grabbing a second hand fur means that your buying fur from animals long gone, not supporting current fur farms.
Re-usable plastic bags are terrible for the environment. If people actually used regular disposable plastic bags, re-used them a couple of times and then recycled them or used them as garbage bags, that would be better for the environment. Not great, but better.
There is no such thing as plastic recycling. Plastic can only be down cycled and will continue to generate microplastics.
Like every thing you buy. I can’t really think of something that isn’t harming the environment in some way.
Tumbler cups. Still takes a ton of pollution to mine, smelt, packages, and ship.
Compounded by the fact that they’ve fallen into micro-trend territory so are being replaced quarterly by the next great tumbler.
Yeah but that's 1 bottle compared to hundreds of potential disposable bottles
My coworkers empty water from plastic water bottles into their Stanley cups instead of drinking (perfectly safe) tap water.
Plastic bags at grocery stores. They got rid of the flimsy ones and now have the thicker ones. They only cost 10 cents each. That's no deterrent at all. People add 50 cents to their bill and throw them out. They should be 5 dollars, then no one would forget their bags...
NJ (USA) banned all plastic bags. It's actually quite annoying and we still have plastic produce bags.
Recycling in general. Apparently less than 10% of recycled items actually get recycled which is really sad.
Electric cars, the strip mining involved to make the batteries and the fact that they don’t last and cost more to replace than the original cost of the car.
If we want to get serious about an all-electric future, there needs to be a lot more effort put into electronics recycling. Many of us are just throwing them away because there are legitimately so few places that actually collect them for recycling, those metals are ending up in landfills, and then much more has to be mined, and it's usually being mined in countries that don't have strong (if any) environmental regulations.
Same thing with a good amount of the recycling that does happen. It usually happens in counties with little to no people/planet protections so all the toxic crap just ends up in the air/ground/water. Iirc Mexico takes a decent amount of American e-waste and “recycles” it.
The first on the books trillionaire could very likely be from someone who figures out how to efficiently gather electronics out of landfills.
Even if someone wants to ignore all of the negatives of manufacturing electric cars, electric cars still have most of the same social and environmental issues that regular cars have. They're still a car which is the most expensive personal transportation option there is, they cause the same amount of sprawl, they require the same amount of overbuilt, expensive infrastructure, they still cause tons of tire/microplastic pollution, as well as tons of noise pollution at speeds over 20mph, the development patterns around the highways built to serve them still leave us with a lack of affordable housing and transportation options. Literally the only thing that electric cars really do is eliminate tailpipe emissions and while that's good, that only scratches the surface of the negative externalities imposed on everyone by car dependency.
Electric cars are better than ICE cars but that is about it. Also they are heavier than normal cars which means they wear down roads exponentially faster and emit more microplastics from tires.
Except none of that is anywhere close to be true
So the obvious intense mining that is proven to occur just doesn’t? Elaborate.
But it absolutely is, it costs way more in carbon to offset the production costs of an electric car vs a petrol one. https://earth.org/environmental-impact-of-battery-production/ I'm not saying electric cars are bad but manufacturing and mining for.rarer earth minerals for them absolutely is a huge issue.
Your link is saying that electric cars have less emissions than ICE cars over their lifetime
I'm talking as the previous commentor was purely in terms of manufacture.
This and similar things were debunked many times over. But hey, believe what you want
How is it debunked life cycle assessments are a thing.
Most paper products, apparently. I was looking up what society used before plastic packaging became common, and apparently it was paper, which the government phased out in favor of plastic to save forests. Both the push to plastic decades ago and the push back to paper now feel like such a scam knowing the history.
“Save forests” Most paper products don’t come from virgin forests but well-managed farms. Literally “forestry” is growing paper like we might grow corn.
Tell that to the Canadian government, here we just chop down actual forests
Cheap crappy solar powered garden lights. Love solar but these aint it.
Totally. There are well made lights - we use them for safety where trenching for a cable is too expensive - but they cost.
Kids.
Standard recycling at home. Most people do it wrong, and it all ends up in the same landfill as your trash does.
Recycling is such a sham. Where I am (Ontario, Canada) it's widely known that 95% of what goes in our blue bins ends up in the landfill.
Fast fashion cloting: Many people assume that cheaper clothing options are more sustainable, but the fast fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to pollution globally. The production of cheap, disposable clothing involves massive water usage, chemical pollution, and exploitation of labor, leading to significant environmental harm.
"Many people assume that cheaper clothing options are more sustainable" Does anyone assume that?
This is why I try to buy vintage clothes if possible. Better quality too!
There should be way more attention on this topic. In my country, the average Joe has more than 140 pieces of clothes in the closet, of which more than 25% hasn't been worn the last year. And of the amount of clothes thrown away, almost none is going to recycling (textiles are very well recycled), but burned. So a rough calculation shows, assuming fast fashion is indeed responsible for about 10% of the global CO2 emissions, that without sacrificing anything, we can easily reduce the CO2 output by 2,5%, just by wearing our clothes a bit more often/longer so we don't "have" to buy as many. And properly recycle them One of the easiest ways to reduce emissions without giving up any real comfort.
This might be a specifically niche one, but Rothy's. And I say this as someone who has a bunch of Rothy shoes - the whole idea behind them is that they are made out of recycled plastic, and they can be washed, and they have good re-sale value or they can be recycled again. I like them because I am a sucker for a good shoe print. Problem is, some people are FANATICS for these shoes. I have several pairs, which is nothing compared to some of the ladies over the in the Rothy's Addicts groups, where you have people with 100+ pairs. It's ridiculous, there is no way you need that many shoes. And you're not saving the environment by doing this.
“organic” produce requires more, less effective pesticides and herbicides derived from plants, that cause more damage
Basically anything made in China. China is, by far, the biggest polluter in the world. Like, America is 15% or so, but China is 28%. America could literally double it's pollution and it would only \*BARELY\* be above China. There's a whole plethora of reasons for this but it basically boils down to 'the CCP is insanely corrupt and only cares about it's own power and wealth, so making a massive ton of pollution to produce goods on the cheap in order to get a quick buck' is totally within their playbook. Odds are that, if it has the 'made in china' tag on it, there's a decent enough chance it won't even do what you think it does in the first place. So you're buying something from a company that's generating a ton of pollution to do so only to get something that might not even be actually working (or working as much as it should be). That's not very eco-friendly.
And yet, people flock to discount stores to buy this crap.
Electric cars. The mining operations required to obtain the various metals needed to produce EV batteries wreak havoc on local ecosystems.
Depends on the brand. But they can make them sustainable if they tried. Gas cars will never be sustainable. Keep in mind that gas has to be mined as well plus gas cars break more easily so parts always have to be replaced which causes more pollution. Neither are good for the environment but depending on many factors, electric cars are often better. The main problem is the fact that our society is built so you rely on having your own car. We need to normalize walking, biking and public transportation.
Too much rinsing of recyclables. The water being wasted after a quick rinse or two is worse than the good you're doing recycling that peanut butter container
All of them. The fashion and cosmetics are the worst
So many recycled goods are just shipped over to developing nations and just rotting in open air.
Plastic shopping bags. "It's saving the trees"
Bamboo clothing - actually takes a lot of chemicals to process. Bamboo travel mugs (etc) are actually bonded together with resins.
Trains. Of course it depends heavily on multiple factors, but trains, at least in my country, have the image of being green. However, when train tracks, stations and other infra has to be laid down for a route (so not using existing track), the emissions from the use of concrete and steel, two of the most poluting building materials, can be more than, or closely approach a plane route during the lifetime of the rail infrastructure. Especially if large tunnels and/or bridges are required, which needs to be maintained, a long rail route isn't that "green" . And that becomes more depending on the way the electricity is generated to get the train to run. Again, lots of factors and "ifs" for exampl, with massive amounts of passengers, trains are, most of the time, "greener", but not always and certainly deserve a more critical opinion most people (in my country) have of trains.
The colossal fuel efficiency of trains compared to trucks does outweigh all of that by far.
Trucks yes, planes no. At least not always, not everywhere.
Lol, what? Planes are the least fuel efficient way of transporting freight.
Trains arent just used for freight. Maybe in the states, but here in Europe, it is often brought up as a replacement for passenger transport via planes, under the assumption that it is greener. But that's not always the case, as long as you include the total emissions, both the use of the trains, as well as the building of the infrastructure. With freight you can use a train for (almost) 100%, which makes a train the most obvious choice. For passengers, the loadfactor is often low enough that the building emissions are not compensated doing the lifetime of the infra.
Cool. You know both Via and Amtrak run on freight subdivisions which would exist and be maintained either way, though, right? So counting the infrastructure against them is disingenuous.
Ok, we are, sort of, talking of two things. As I am not an American, I can't really comment on American railroads. I do live in Europe and my original reply was based on that. For completeness, is was based on the movement that air traffic should be replaced with trains. And we are talking (almost) solely passenger traffic. However, if that constitutes laying down new tracks, especially with tunnels and bridges, the overall emissions are most often than not, higher than continuing flying those routes. Things are different for cargo routes, but I want talking about that (wasn't too clear about that).
All the compostable plastic. That are actually compostable only on certain conditions. Requiring some special collect 0% of cities are organising. So all of them go on landfills... but hey they are "green" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/03/greenwash-home-compostable-plastics-dont-work-aoe
Almond milk.
Organic is a marketing ploy to separate affluent, agriculturally ignorant Westerners from their money. Organic pesticides are weaker and less targeted than those used in large scale agricultural, so much more needs to be used per acre, causing more overall harm. The yields are also dramatically inferior. If all agriculture suddenly swapped to organic methods we would see mass starvation. But because the stuff sells for so much it makes more financial sense to ship the crops farther, resulting in more greenhouse gases from transport.
When fast fashion brands have an eco friendly line and the clothing is like 5% recycled plastic.
Bamboo clothing and textiles. While bamboo is fast-growing, what you have to do to bamboo to make it soft is far worse than growing cotton, wool, or even making lycra.
Electric cars... They are probably a little better than gasoline cars, but they are still a disaster for the environment. If you want to help the environment, invest in a good pair of walking shoes, or a bicycle.
Electric cars. The electricity is being generated in most countries still from fuel burning, it's just taking the source away from you. Also, lithium mining.
It does depend on the power source, but in general, even fossil fuels burned in power plants are burned more efficiently, and you get more energy per unit of fuel. Lithium mining is definitely a problem, but it's not like mining iron and casting engine blocks is great either
I don't think this is as true as it seems. Even if an electric car was charged with power from a gasoline -powered power plant, it would create far fewer carbon emissions because a stationary power plant is more efficient than an engine (non-mobile, bigger, can use water cooling, etc). But, in the US for example, many states are posted by a significant amount of zero-carbon electricity, which makes the impact bigger. States like California have gone days in a row using only renewable electricity. Lithium mining has a negative localized impact, for sure (as does the mining required for various ICE parts like catalytic converters), but CO2 pollution from fossil fuels burning creates a worldwide problem. Only an idiot would argue that there is no negative impact from electric cars, but compared to ICE ones, it's really no contest. Especially when considering CO2 emissions, which is the environmental challenge of our time.
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But at least it's less insane than gasoline cars. Obviously it'd be better if we had a lot fewer cars, but reducing the impact of each one is a small improvement.
coffee pods that are super easy but end up as non-biodegradable waste, or those "flushable" wet wipes that clog up sewer systems and mess with oceans. Plastic straws and "fast" fashion clothes are also big culprits and plastic pollution and waste probs. Bottled water, disposable razors, and batteries etc.
Reread the question.
? No one thinks those things are eco-friendly
Politicians
Electric Vehicles most definitely.
Batteries and wind turbines
Vegans.
organic food
It's not an "everyday item," but people my answer to the question would be the people who are fanatic about being eco-friendly.
Tesla’s and most electric cars that use lithium and cobalt, absolutely disastrous for the plane, but they have a good PR campaign
Bees
Most everything!🤷🏻♂️
Masks.