Have Environment Issues Caused a Change in Your Behaviour?

200sols said:
I wondered how long before we got some whataboutism, thats what these threads always descend into.
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he ain't lying though is he?
me personally i've stopped eating foods from all over the globe whilst i eating a vegan diet and now eat food from local farms.
i also cycle to and from work, visting friends and family..
 
Semple said:
Yeah this definitely needs to be made more clearer. And councils need to stop being lazy with specific plastic that they'll only accept.

Frankly i think there should at least be a law passed to outline which recyclable plastics can be used, and at least that way all councils have to take it for recycling.
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In Medway we get supplied with disposable plastic (lol) sacks or a reusable big white bag for our recycling - on it, it says it an be used for foil, plastics, tin cans, aerosols and glass - fairly straightforward, so all that goes into it. But I think I was reading a thread on here where it turns out that different types of plastic might not actually be recyclable - for instance, I think dark plastics (like the kind you get in ready meal packages) aren't recyclable? But the council doesn't really specify this, so I'm not sure if it's permissible or not.
 
Whilst it's important to "do your bit" never fool yourself into thinking that the absolute tiny amount of good being done will offset the crap thats created by places like India and China.

Again, its great to do your bit but don't think you're saving the planet.
 
200sols said:
Of course it will, there are countless millions of people who wrongly think like you do, if they all made little changes it adds up to big differences.
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More like countless billions of people who think like me, and i know its the wrong way to think about it.
 
ianh said:
Whilst it's important to "do your bit" never fool yourself into thinking that the absolute tiny amount of good being done will offset the crap thats created by places like India and China.

Again, its great to do your bit but don't think you're saving the planet.
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I'm under no illusion about saving the planet, but I figure the less pointless waste in general, the better.
 
CosmicClown said:
No
Because Im not easily influenced by what the media tell me.

Yeah blame the poor man for destroying the planet when corporations have done most of the damage....

IE Deforestation
Oil spills in oceans
Plastic being dumped
Dangerous chemicals being disposed of in bodies of water (As a recent example a corp was recently found to of been disposing anti depressant medication into water and making the fishes act loopy)
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They wouldn't do the damage they do if there wasn't the demand for their products. For example, if people completely stopped buying salad in plastic bags, corporations would have to change. Unfortunately the consumer is typically greedy and lazy and has come accustomed to 'putting it in the bin' and letting someone else deal with the problem.
 
bloodiedathame said:
They wouldn't do the damage they do if there wasn't the demand for their products. For example, if people completely stopped buying salad in plastic bags, corporations would have to change. Unfortunately the consumer is typically greedy and lazy and has come accustomed to 'putting it in the bin' and letting someone else deal with the problem.
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That's where i believe it should be the corporations that should be forced to change and not the individual, the average individual doesn't care what their products are packaged in as long as the product is still edible/usable once bought.
 
weathmatth said:
That's where i believe it should be the corporations that should be forced to change and not the individual, the average individual doesn't care what their products are packaged in as long as the product is still edible/usable once bought.
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Agreed. But they won't. And Governments won't force them because globalisation is a corrupt mess. I strongly believe that the only way they'll change is when their customers leave them.
 
bloodiedathame said:
Agreed. But they won't. And Governments won't force them because globalisation is a corrupt mess. I strongly believe that the only way they'll change is when their customers leave them.
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Globalism has very little to do with corruption, do you really think it'd be any different had there been serious protectionism instead? The corruption would simple have been more local.

Globalism is simply the economic policy of sharing employment, boosting less fortunate countries closer to consumers rather than producers and i'm sure other myriad descriptions fit, it's not liberal, it's not conservative, it simply is. The power is still ultimately in the hands of the consumer whether they'll consume the luxury or not, nobody forces people to want things. A boycott of consumption would never go down well considering how important it is for the economy, it literally is the economy.
 
I've been car less for 20 years.. Bike and trains..

As family, we definitely recycle more than we used to.. I say recycle, we sort it for collection but if it's actually recycled then who actually knows.

I'm still mystified and confused as to why there's not more pressure on the Supermarkets an suppliers to significantly reduce packaging. Even cooked chickens from ASDA now come in plastic casing..

I'd like to see air and road traffic reduced.. We all moan about how busy the roads have become and we need more runways but there comes a point that we have to weigh up what's more important.. Leisure or the environment. Increase tax on air travel so that people think twice and travel only if they have to.
 
Edrof said:
The recent increase in media attention towards environmental problems has changed my outlook on my daily life quite a lot.

I always recycled but now I'm more stringent with myself and I'm becoming far more resentful of the throwaway culture we have naturally developed. This especially comes to the fore at birthdays and Christmas when I look at the millions of toys my children have and ponder what else I can get them (that they won't play with once the week's out). Parents of GD, what have you done in this case? I'm thinking of switching to monetary gifts.

The largest impact has been buying antiques, though. Collecting weaponry has long put me into that world but I never really noticed, until recently, the rest of the stuff on offer and I'm quite kicking myself after decking the house out in sterile Ikea. I can get amazing craftsmanship, character, and a huge dose of history for less than what the high streets ask in most cases but it's also the ultimate in recycling. The lack of sweatshops is also a bonus.

How about you chaps?
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How old is your car?

World population has gone up by a third in 30 odd years. That is the real crux of global warming. There needs to be population control at some point.
 
StriderX said:
Globalism has very little to do with corruption, do you really think it'd be any different had there been serious protectionism instead? The corruption would simple have been more local.

Globalism is simply the economic policy of sharing employment, boosting less fortunate countries closer to consumers rather than producers and i'm sure other myriad descriptions fit, it's not liberal, it's not conservative, it simply is. The power is still ultimately in the hands of the consumer whether they'll consume the luxury or not, nobody forces people to want things. A boycott of consumption would never go down well considering how important it is for the economy, it literally is the economy.
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The scale, size and reach of the companies is a big part of the problem though.
 
I think the environment was reported as much in the news 30 years ago as it is now.

I remember it was 1989 / early 1990 and it was all about the ozone layer and CFCs. Smoking was still in the news back then but more because of the damage it did to the ozone layer than it being a health/NHS issue. CFCs came from emissions, aerosol cans and old refrigerators. There wasn't much in a way of recycling back then though unless you had a car and could drop your empties at the bottle bank etc.

The buzzword nowadays seems to be "carbon footprint" rather than CFCs.

As for change in my behaviour, if I'm given the right tools, I can help recycle etc. When I first got my house in the mid-2000s, I just had a general waste bin and a small recycling box which was limited to paper and glass. Nowadays though, the council provides 3 bins - general waste, a compost bin (gardening etc) and a recycling bin, all full-sized bins. The recycling can take glass, paper, cardboard, plastic and textiles, which is a lot more than I could recycle 15 years ago and I don't need a car for it.
 
413x said:
Having kids is the absolute worst thing you can do for the planet.
Those who don't have kids but also want them make the biggest sacrifice. I myself don't want them.
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This x100
Unfortunately it's the one massive elephant in the room that very few people want to admit or even think about.
 
Semple said:
Do you buy loose fruit and veg?
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I do for bananas

Veg I generally only eat salad, my options are either get it premixed in plastic, or buy it individually, still wrapped in ******* plastic so I generally try to go mixed salad as there's more plastic that can recycled over the stuff wrapped in non recyclable plastic

Other than that I generally only eat chicken or steak, again in plastic, even if I got fresh meat they still wrap it in plastic but it's more plastic that goes straight in the bin so at least the steaks and chicken I get does have some plastic I can recycle

Same with bottled water, if I could get it in glass bottles I would but I don't get that choice

If I could, I would happily forage and hunt for my food
 
It has affected us. We make an effort to recycle a lot more, and we are trying to avoid single use plastics. It's interesting that you sometimes see somebody using the disagreement of the science behind climate change as a reason to continue to treating the planet poorly.

I can't see there's much to loose by trying to reduce my impact in my short time here. It's not that inconvenient really.
 
havnt changed but ive always reused bags ,shopped at charity shops for clothes ,dont fly ,refill my plastic bottle on my walks ,vegetarian ,
what winds me up is speed of change why not just switch over now to biodegradable carrier bags ,and dog bags that the dirty gits leave when out of sight of people
 
bloodiedathame said:
The scale, size and reach of the companies is a big part of the problem though.
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Well that's just the reality of capitalism, no matter how much the lazy fair folks want to deny it. You don't typically get competition as an equivalence (just a company offering the same, with a different name), what you get is a new technology that's been adopted or developed specifically to destroy the other company if they don't follow along.

Big companies obviously just end up becoming bigger and eating up these potential technologies that could eliminate them, these companies aren't dumb enough now like they used to be in the past when the ideals were thought of. The only solution is regulation but we're back to the political problem again of people taking regulation to mean "communism".
 
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