@miah @zeborah @iju @sinituulia @Ailbhe @renwillis Glass needs to be reused very often to have a better footprint than plastic. Non recyclable plastic also does not need to end up in a landfill. It can also be burned providing district heating.
You don't have to use plastic of course, but just pointing out, that the effect is not as sustainable as people assume. Just reading "not the end of the world", which contains this helpful chart on the effect if lifestyle changes.
@rlcw @miah @zeborah @iju @sinituulia @renwillis in the UK, glass recycling is common but sale of objects using recycled glass is rare. It mostly goes into roads.
@Ailbhe @miah @zeborah @iju @sinituulia @renwillis In Germany we have a very thorough deposit system for glass and plastic bottles and some glass jars. The glass containers are collected, cleaned and reused. They are standardized, so can be reused used across different companies.
The metals lids are not reused, but recycled.
@rlcw @miah @zeborah @iju @sinituulia @renwillis that's a MUCH better system. We can get milkman deliveries using a similar system, in that they collect and reuse the glass bottles, but it's not standard and it's more expensive than getting the things in a supermarket.
@rlcw @miah @zeborah @iju @sinituulia @Ailbhe @renwillis I have seen estimates that the military causes between 10 and 20% of emissions and this is in peace time. Cutting it in half would probbaly be a bigger saving than citizens could do by living in deprivation.
@kallemp @miah @zeborah @iju @sinituulia @Ailbhe @renwillis Switching to renewable energy, driving electric cars, reducing meat in the diet, or even living in a city where you don't need your own car will increase your quality of life and probably also it's duration. So please stop spreading nonsense, and do take some responsibility. The goal us net zero, not net -15%.
@rlcw @kallemp All of that but ALSO ban the fucking fighter jets and massive drills and parades that burn up immense amounts of state budgets and ludicrous amounts of refined oil fuels and even ethanol that could have been used somewhere else. Coincidentally it would probably also mean less murder and respiratory illnesses.
@rlcw @kallemp @miah @zeborah @sinituulia
I feel this conversation is getting too agressive for my liking.
Personal measures for cutting CO2 (https://ecoevo.social/@rlcw/113044145589074997) are good, but US military is also bigger creator of CO2 than many countries (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18012022/military-carbon-emissions/).
Majority of CO2 are created outside personal spending, be it creation of goods, transportation, or changes in land use.
Ultimately it's the state that rules what's legal. "Wrong" answers shouldn't be on the market.
@iju "Wrong answers should not be on the market" - but they are and people know about it AND know about alternatives AND know that many of the "wrong" products are only on the market due to heavy marketing. And still, when you ask people to adjust their behavior they either push away responsibility, like @kallemp just did. Or you have industries publicly pushing harmful products even harder and using the public opinion to actively block policy changes. /1
@iju @kallemp @sinituulia Example 1, Transportation, Germany: For years the manufacturers lobbied to keep electric cars off the streets spreading disinformation far and wide. So in Germany we still have the majority of new cars running combustible engines despite them being more expensive to run. However electric cars are available. And here the personal choice matters, because people choose to buy electric or not. They choose to buy oversized SUVs over smaller cars.Their consumer choice matters
@iju @kallemp @sinituulia Example 2: Landuse: the majority of farming land is used to feed livestock specifically for beef and pork, and for most part in terrible conditions. People know this, they know it's harmful, and how they consume does change the market. Now farmers of cause have a massive lobby and are concerned over the drop in German pork consumption. This market needs to be bled out by consumers to disappear, and your personal choice to buy cheap meat or not makes a difference. /3
@iju @kallemp @sinituulia Example 3: Heating homes: a few years back the government wanted to fade out oil and gas heating, essentially keeping people from buying new, expensive, CO2 heavy heating systems. "The public" lost their shit over this, and many private home owners made the stupid choice to install a fossil fuel heating instead of one running on renewables. These heatings will collectively produce massive amounts of CO2 over the next 30 years, because of those peoples individual choice.
@iju @kallemp @sinituulia Yes, the personal choice of these individuals is small, but together they shape complete industries and collectively are responsible for huge amounts of CO2. Your personal choice makes a difference, and there is no reason to wait for things to be illegal, to change them, when this is within your zone of influence. It's like voting, only better because you do have an immediate and certain impact. Choose to create less CO2 and don't be part of the problem. /end
If you have enough consumers to collectively make a difference by spending individually untold amount of time to investigate all the possibilities on the market, you ALSO have enough citizens to vote those bad possibilities from market.
Not to mention "use electric" sounds really bad when most of my home country's national parks are under thread from foreign mining operations eager to tap the EV-battery materials hidden in the soil.
And to be clear, I'm not against making good choices.
It might help to understand my point to know that I've chosen my home for decades so as to not need a car at all, I eat plant-heavy diet etc., BUT I'm still on the red because my electricity mix has coal etc.
Meanwhile biking (my chosen transportation) is dangerous due to my taxes being used to build better auto infrastructure (again, just one example) and further destruction of nature is justified with EVs.
@iju @kallemp @sinituulia I am sorry your country is being exploited for it's resources without concern for the ecosystem same here for coal.Fossil fuels cause even more harm both by destroying the land and the climate, including your national parks without a single mine being built. Also fossil fuel technologies use lithium, etc. Battery technology however is already moving away from lithium and other rare materials, meaning electrification will not automatically destroy intact ecosystems.
@rlcw @iju @sinituulia Finland is developing a lithium resource/mine but the mine if foreign owned and multinationals are by design not good taxpayers.
@rlcw If I campaign to have the largest polluters in the world reduce pollution that is not shirking responsibility even if you think I should just do what you say.
If all end users reduce by 50% it wont make as much difference as if the main consumers reduce by 5%.
A 5% reduction is easier to achieve in practice than a 50% reduction.
It is the same sort of bs when the EU says they want Finland to manage their forests better (to make more money for their friends) while Finland has pretty much the highest Forest cover in EU and not planning to reduce it.
Hypocrisy irritates me and people who are the problem should look to home first before demanding from others.
(Numbers are illustrative estimates)
@kallemp You can do both. Reducing your own emission footprint AND lobbying for the top 5 polluters to change their ways are not mutually exclusive activities. And by now many green choices now are so easy to make and often the cheaper choice - especially when it comes to anything heavy in energy use in the personal sphere. So why not do it?
@rlcw You have not followed my comments. I recycle more than most, I cannot afford to waste and am a vegitarian for a lot of reasons before the toxic anti-meat propaganda became mainstream.
I am of the opinion that much of the green movement has been designed or hijacked to serve special interests and has VERY LITTLE to do with social benefits.
So my stand is that I already do more than most and all that I can in a personal capacity. What remains it to ALERT people of the hidden agendas that are not in the interest of people.
I challenge people and propaganda that wants to heap guilt on people to serve special interests.
We're getting out of topic, but the problem in your forestry-argument is that of catégorisation. Finland has a lot of trees, but tree farms aren't the same as forests.
Forests are complicated ecosystems that create virtuous circles. For lack of them many of our most common birds of late 20th century are now threatened, or even endangered; and that's just one problem.
Ofc there are business interests that would rather focus on the trees, and they get most coverage.