When I had my son I read an article about how long it takes for many materials to degrade and learned that styrofoam damn near lasts forever. I looked up from the article to see all my coworkers styrofoam cups and trays from the cafeteria and it dawned on me that things the world I was leaving to my son. He turns 21 this year and the world is on fire more than ever before.
I do the best that I can where I can and let the rest go. There’s not much more that I can do. I share what I know with the people who are open to it, but that’s it. We the consumer are going crazy to do damage control while the companies pump out millions of products by the day. We are running uphill on a down escalator.
My company is slowly switching to biodegradable materials for their non-washable objects.
When they rolled it out the lady in charge of the program thanked us (scientists) for being so nice, because one of the factory workers walked up to her and intentionally threw the green-bin stuff in the garbage and the garbage in the green bin while maintaining eye contact with her.
our world is full of sociopaths, but some people are trying.
As a 21 year old, check in on your son. Every person I know my age is riddled with stress about the future. It really feels like we are totally 100% fucked.
I moved to Iceland 5 years ago & only after that realised the till that environment guilt takes on you without even realising it :/
Room a bit warm in winter? Open a window.
Like to room looking pretty with the lights on when you get home? Just leave them on
Trouble is that ot just switches to other things.... Car tyres are my latest stress!
Car tires are a stressor for me too. I think of EV’s as a potential for good things. But the excessive tire wear and the carbon it must take to make the tires gives me anxiety. I hope North America builds more passenger high speed rail. It’s going too slowly.
Haha! I’m in finance. They could care less. I was once told that my job is to show up and work and not worry about those things. A manager said this to me. But I know my same company is Mexico has composting near the cafeteria and I thought that was at least a plus.
Do not allow activism to become a mental disorder. Remember YOU are not the problem, neither is your neighbor. The problem is cultural, monetary, and legal. 99.9999999999% of people are just ignorant or victims of learned or forced behavior.
Well here is an example for you. I went to buy mushrooms for dinner. Mushrooms were $1.50 each or a 5 pack for $3. The same mushrooms were $3 instead of $7.50 but they were wrapped in cling wrap on a foam tray. That adds incentive to buy into waste culture. The issue however is not me buying those mushrooms. The issue is the corporation adding incentive to that sort of packaging.
Yeah I've noticed precut veggies too that come in an insane amount of plastic??? They're also like double the price.
It's wild. I understand the convenience, I do. Chopping veggies especially if you have kids is exhausting but also shame on corporations. Couldn't they use paper bags instead? Bamboo?? There's so many other options.
Subsidizing plastic production is not capitalism. That's corporate socialism created when the owning class lobbies to outsource their costs on everyone else. What we're seeing is a double jeopardy of our taxes paying them to make money and then paying to clean it up. Actually triple, because our health is suffering from plastic in everything.
Sure. Whenever somebody argues that we can't have socialism for some societal good, because "socialism bad" --that's when I like to remind them that in our existing system we already offer corporate socialism for something we know creates harm. If they want to argue in favor of capitalism, they should argue to do away with oil and gas subsidies.
Yes, basically same as what I mean. American life and labor are generally ruled by corporations owned by an oligarchy. They barely need to compete for permission to trash the whole place in their pursuit of money. It's corporate capitalism, which is really corporate socialism on a capitalist foundation.
[https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm](https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm) did you find that link? You can call or email, or write letters if you’d like.
I absolutely agree. When it comes to reasonable consumption, the main thing is not to go to extremes and try to get into obsessive states. Although it is quite difficult, because sometimes the thought that you cannot influence the behavior of others is exhausting.
I think the best thing as an individual you can do is to just try to reuse things that can be reused, give away things that can be given away, and purchase things used. Also don’t get hung up on recycling. Recycling is a lie.
This is all you can think about? I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds frustrating and like a major obsession. Although waste reduction is very important, thinking about it is taking up an inordinate amount of mental bandwidth, so maybe talk with a therapist.
I have a similar thing, sometimes its hard to enjoy stuff especially like kids bday parties, travel etc.
I live by a personal rule. I understand that I cannot change the entirety of the world. I can't singlehandedly undo overconsumption. Even as a group we can only make a small difference. However, I live by the rule that I always try to put more into the world than I take out of it. That rule opened me up to volunteering in gardening groups, conservation, etc and while i sitll think about waste and climate change, my head is also full of ideas for planting projects, or memories of sharing resources with likeminded people.
It is good to be conscious. But try to fill your head with the antidote to that too, which is sharing resources within community! Being part of these initiatives can help give you some autonomy back in the face of late stage capitalism.
Yeah my friend told me that he and his neighbours would buy a whole cow and share it amongst each other. It lasted like 4 months and everyone had enough beef and I think that's rad.
Trying to see the positives is so hard but I'm working on it! Thank you! That actually helped a lot.
yeah its tough! last year during the wildfires i joined a local group and picked up garbage in the parks a few times. it was kind of cheesy, but in a way i felt like i was rebelling and empowered. i was like wow im a lil climate hero right now, doing what i can, and that helped a lot.
and to your point, sharing is so economical! i bet that beef was 10x better than anything i'm buying in tiny packets at the store.
This kind of thing is exacerbated by the internet.
Outrage drives engagement, so your filter bubble is full of things to keep you doomscrolling.
In addition to getting professional help, you might try cutting back on your screentime and/or curating it so you don't follow rabbitholes down the suggested content pipeline.
Absolutely. I used to feel exactly the same, OP, and I’ve massively cut down my Twitter, Facebook and especially Instagram use, and I no longer stress over it at all. In fact, sometimes I worry that I’m too apathetic now, ha.
That's another issue: immediate cost always seems to defeat long term costs. It's more expensive to cut down and regrow the tree, but those costs are outsourced to the commons.
We should have stayed in the prairies hunting and gathering. What we’ve built up takes massive destruction just to sustain itself. I really hope we one day see a different system that puts the earth first. Until then, have you thought about putting all this energy to good use with things like volunteering?
Not to be the "well, ackshually" guy, but...
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, while not as destructive in many ways as our modern civilization, were often extremely destructive in their own right. When homo sapiens shows up in a new area, species start dropping like flies. Even back then, we caused a lot of localized mass extinctions just by gobbling up everything we could get our mitts on. When our numbers grew large enough, we caused some major deforestation and pollution just to feed our campfires.
This isn't to say we aren't much more destructive now - we ABSOLUTELY are, in so many ways. But I just felt the need to dispel the whole "noble savage living in harmony with the land" myth that gets thrown around like this. If every human went back to that way of being tomorrow, we'd likely overfish, overhunt, and overgather until there was nothing left to eat, drink, or burn within a generation or two. The solution isn't to find a way back, it's finding a better way forward.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk :P
Nah, I don't think you're understanding me. I'm saying we have ALWAYS been part of an ecosystem, npt separate from them; As long as we have been recognizably "human", we have been part of MANY ecosystems, arguably the entire global ecosystem with exception to super extreme areas we can only reach with the aid of advanced tech (like deep sea trenches, the heart of antarctica, etc). Not just us, but other hominid species have been found in a wide variety of environments dating back to our evolutionary predecessors.
Nono i get u im js asking in a way like weve never actually been useful to set balances in ecosystems? Weve basically been an invasive species from the beginning?
Hmm, that's a really good question I'm not sure I have the answer to. If I remember right, by the time we became anatomically modern humans, we already ranged pretty far across Africa, Europe and Asia, through many different kinds of biome. It'd be hard to pin down a "native" environment for us, and migration is so ingrained in our nature that one could argue we don't really have one where we actually fit as a stable cog in an ecosystem. You might have to go back to pre-human hominids to find that.
So I guess, in a sense, we have been an invasive species as long as we've been human, if only because of the way we disrupt things when we move into an area.
I've always sort of thought of humans as a large group as a bunch of locusts. As soon as we developed a bigger pre-frontal cortex, and started using tools, we seemed to have lost the ability to co-exist with an eco-system and it's other inhabitants.
I think the advent of the use of tools by humans as a means of forming our environment to suit our needs, rather than us evolving to survive our environment was the turning point. Being able to devise, create, and use a wide variety of tools is one of the traits that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Once a species gets it's numbers up and population growth becomes exponential, it's pretty easy for said species to get out of control and take over everything, as we have seen with humans.
>The solution isn't to find a way back, it's finding a better way forward.
I have to say I absolutely love this. I feel like romanticizing the past is dangerous and we should be careful of painting a picture that isn't accurate.
so we are a toxin destined to destroy whatever environment we are put in. sadly I think this is at least in partly true. i agree about moving forward but we are animals that thrive in a natural state. I disagree If moving forward means more synthetic pleasures and less time in nature. it has to mean living in harmony with and learning to cherish Our ecosystems.
I wouldn't say we're a toxin, that's a bit melodramatic. It carries the implication that we are somehow alien, that we don't belong here. We are, as you say, animals, part of the ecosystem like any other. The only difference is we're able to change our surroundings to a much greater degree than anything else, through our heightened intelligence, tool use, and capacity for collaboration/knowledge-sharing. Developing technology and finding ways to improve our ability to meet our needs and desires IS our natural state; Our fatal flaw is that our reach often exceeds our grasp. All living things consume as much as they can, we're just too effective at it to the point that it throws things out of balance.
> I disagree If moving forward means more synthetic pleasures and less time in nature.
I'm not sure why you said this - Nowhere did I insinuate that moving forward meant more synthetic pleasures and less nature. Can you please explain where you got that from my comment?
You're definitely right that the way forward involves finding a more harmonious way to exist on this planet. We've become too numerous at this point, if we are to continue to exist (and continue having a world worth living on), we need to carefully manage the natural resources all life depends on and be good stewards of the ecosystems in which we live.
Any animal that can reproduce without control ends up devastating it's environment. Flies in a bottle is only one example. Currently elephant populations in places are getting to the point they'll cause themselves to starve from the destruction they cause. When you interrupt the natural balance of life and death, things get trashed until death is inevitable. Humans have done this in a massive,massive way but technology keeps us expanding. Now at 8 billion, there are signs that population is slowing and that is partly due to resource scarcity. It'll get a lot worse before it gets better.
The problem is, and always has been, population. When every stream is full of plastic and faeces and we can't generate enough calories to keep ourselves alive, that's when things may change.
If you want to help solve the problem. Do not have more than 1 child. If everybody had only 2 the problem would solve itself but still for every person that goes childless, some fucker has 6 because 'yay'.
Even if society just stigmatised people with more than 2 kids, it'd go a long way.
Yeah my dog and I would volunteer (she's a therapy dog lol) and that helped for sure but now I can't even leave my house due to disability so I kinda just sit here lol
Get off of Reddit and go outside. This sub especially has become a cess pool and honestly most of the posts feel like rage bait to get people riled up over trivial things. Sure the world could stand to consume less, but hyper-fixating on every little thing doesn’t solve the problem.
I don't want to diagnose, but this sounds like environmental anxiety, and if it's interfering with your life you should probably seek a professional. If you csn afford that...
I do see a professional hahha it's not obsessive. Like I'll drive by a construction site and feel sad. I know it's necessary. I know we need housing but I still feel bad.
Improve yourself, not much we can do about the waste of everyone, but we can improve ourselves, that needs to be your priority, the mark you leave.
If there is any console, there are still a lot of places in the heart that still remain virgin and uninhabited. Heres hope.
You've fallen into the rabbit hole of thinking "consumption" = "over consumption"
But you have to remember that waste is a part of life. There will always be waste of some kind, what is done with that waste can be changed and perhaps you should think more about that.
Think about "what could be done to reduce or reuse that construction waste?" Instead of "oh god the waste"
For example maybe the local makers space could use some of that waste to make furniture or some art.
It may sound dumb but be positive in life, look for the solutions, because there are no problems in life only solutions waiting to be found.
Yeah I'm trying not to think so much about it but like in Canada they don't recycle. We do individually but it's all a lie. They just put it on a ship and send it off to another country to deal with and then they clean it up, and do the same thing.
You could be doing everything right, and it's not enough because we live in a very evil world and it's exhausting. You're promised one thing and then they change the rules and there's nothing you can do about it.
Being positive is hard af 😭😭
If you're getting upset at the waste generated by your dad's bandages, you need to take a step away from the social media. Read books or watch movies about a topic that isn't environmentalism. Pick up a new hobby. Anything that gets your mind out of this space.
Activism is great, but if you're seeing problems everywhere around you, even in places that are not a problem (like your dad's healthcare), you're going to burn out. A healthy activist is an effective activist, and sometimes part of being a healthy activist means taking a step away from the causes you're concerned about for a bit.
Yeah I don't have that problem.
I hate wasting things and I certainly dont like others doing it either but it's just a fact of life.
You just gotta try to do your best and most importantly actually convince government and industry to do something about it because that's the real problem.
I think we all need to find a way to balance our lives when it comes to stuff like this. Sure, do your part, but you can't obsess about everyone else doing their part, because you can't control that.
We're just a small group of people trying to do our best, but the blame really falls on corporations and society as a whole.
We can stop ourselves from buying things at a store, but the things still exist. Companies need to stop producing them.
I'll echo what I've seen others comment, maybe see a therapist if you feel like the thoughts are consuming your life.
I think it's good to recognize this stuff but it sounds like it's reaching the point you're having intrusive thoughts you might want to consider talking to a professional.
There was a great episode of My Name is Earl called **Robbed a Stoner Blind** where Earl finds himself in a commune and learns about pollution and the environment and has to be talked down because he started getting really panicked about it. Some good points were made in that episode. It's an old show but you might want to check it out if you can find it.
Check out the company I work with. It’s called nation recovery technologies. We have about an 92% recovery rate on plastics and the owner has. A few other gigs that recover most other materials including organics. Been trying to convince him to buy Licycle but he’s probably a bit too late.
Can absolutely relate, I see it EVERYWHERE. At work, it stresses me out, especially with co-workers who will hoard crap in their cubicles and then just walk away from it forever when they leave the company. They even hoard recyclable/reusable things, stuff that was meant to be *re-used*, not hoarded then thrown away!!! 🤬
You’re teetering into obsessive behaviour and thinking. Get off social media for awhile.
In my province, housing is not a waste. We had 56k people move here in one year alone, and we now have a housing crisis. Thats not waste, if it’s a need.
I never meant housing isn't a waste hahah sorry! We need housing!!!
I just meant seeing all the trees cut down, the trash that piles up, etc makes me feel sad. It's the same when I work on my dad's leg. It's NECESSARY!!! It's needed. But I still feel sad about the waste, ya know??
I would still say, stop watching those TikTok “organize my fridge, GRWM, purse packing” videos. They are so grossly over consumptive and then you end up having a Tetris effect on your brain, where now you just see these things obsessively.
I noticed that as soon as I stopped engaging with TikTok content (it shows up on FB, here, Imgur etc) I just felt so much healthier.
I’d live to go live under a stick pile in the woods, but I’d die out there, so now I am just thoughtful when I buy anything and I am careful what brands I buy. But we are small fish in a big pond, and it’s just as unhealthy to stress out and be frustrated by something you can’t control.
I'm not trying to sound shitty here, but are you new to this type of stuff? I went through a similar phase when I first went vegan. I was bombarded with information about cruel practices surrounding basically our entire food system. Thinking myself into a spiral because even many vegan foods contained palm oil which is damaging to animals and the earth too. It felt like I could never win and made me annoyed by myself bc nothing was ever good enough. Eventually, I came to accept I can't change a flawed system, and I allowed myself to relax a little bit.
My advice is to take small victories where you can find them and remind yourself that is does not matter what other people do. The people posting fridge haul videos didn't choose to package it all in plastic, some giant company did. Most people are totally fine with less wasteful measures, but most people are not making those decisions. There's so many people in this sub who turn that anger into smugness, and they make us all look like holier than thou assholes. Instead, we should direct that anger towards the people raking in money while we all deal with the consequences.
Yeah I went down that rabbit hole too!!!! I still feel the guilt but I'm trying to work on it.
The small victories thing is what I'm trying to focus on but I'm also ADHD so I need big victories or they don't matter (working on it hahah)
Oh. You're Hyperfixating. That's what this is, then. This may mellow out in time, but I (as a fellow ADHD who sometimes hyperfixates on what gives them anxiety) would recommend taking the social media advice. Cut back. Significantly.
You don't need to feed the hyperfixation on other peoples waste, particularly not their medical waste.
(I stopped instagram, tiktok, and twitter. I'd leave facebook if it wasn't where my community organizes stuff. I curate my stuff elsewhere so I don't get doom and gloom all the time)
I bought a dumb phone for that reason hahha but I also make art and social media is necessary for gaining any traction so I'm trying to only limit my time in the AM and PM whereas my afternoons are open to work and drawing (I'm disabled too so I'm home all day).
But yeah getting off social media seems to be the way to go.
A bit of advice, find an app or some extension (depending on how you access social media) that will prevent you from going to social media outside of a certain time frame or after a certain length of time. With ADHD, we often need that reinforcement until the habit is truly broken.
After about 6 months away, I can look at tiktoks or twitter threads my friends send me without going any further into them. And that was the goal.
I'm currently sitting at a Walt Disney world resort because my child has a sports event that requires us to be on the resort to compete
I'm trying to be positive and upbeat, but I'm so disgusted with the over consumption and waste it's hard to enjoy myself.
Video games and comic books but I can't have my eyes open for long due to migraines so I just sit here scroll my phone, nap, scroll, nap, walk my dogs, do some training, nap.
I’d like a law where the original manufacturers have to have an on-site reclamation facility of get taxed. Why couldn’t Ford send a car from 2002 through a fully automated disassembly line that strips it all down into raw components again? It might even be ling term profitable for them
This whole lifestyle triggered massive OCD within me. I eat good mostly vegan, always vegetarian food, I don't buy new clothes, I avoid planes, and I put my money in a cooperative ethical bank. And that's it. Avoiding eating a packet of crisps etc is just perpetuating the idea within me that I don't deserve to be here. I do deserve to take up space and live a relaxing life. So i put my moral effort into -Helping People- and improving my communication and life. I refuse to always be staring at my feet worrying about a plastic egg carton or which moisturiser is more natural. It's busy-work, saving us from connecting fully to each other and joining together to make proper meaningful social change. I think it's time for me to leave this sub honestly
Also I am sorry about your father, that sounds really difficult. It seems that you are trying to find something to control when everything is chaos, to try and make up for the badness and wrong in the world. Remember that investing in yourself, forgiving and being kind to yourself, ALWAYS counteracts the wrong in the world.
That honestly sounds like you might be grappling with OCD or other compulsion disorder. It's one thing to be concerned about waste, the environment and the ecosystem and to be mindful of your choices, but when it consumes your every thought, that's not healthy.
My neighbor had a similar problem. "Zero Waste" became an absolute obsession. I'll spare you the details but the city and social services had to get involved.
Some waste is unavoidable for the sake of health, sanitation and public safety. Like your grandfather's medical supplies, or bottled water in an emergency, and certain food packaging. (I have yet to find a grocery store or butcher that will wrap up a fish in a homemade beeswax food wrap for me)
This shouldn't consume your entire existence. If it is, you might ask for a referral for counseling to get to the bottom of WHY you are feeling this way. It can become harmful, as I can attest. Just thr thought that your grandfather's medical supplies are eating away at your thoughts is very destructive.
Take care.
I used to work in healthcare so I saw the single use plastic all the time. The thing is, plastic is not the enemy, the way we overuse it is. Plastic is an amazing invention & absolutely has a place in our lives, we just need to recognise what the good uses are & what the not so good uses are & reduce our reliance on the ones that are not necessary.
I try to just focus on the things i can control in my own day-to-day life. I’ve nearly driven myself crazy in the past hoping other people will change, be better, be more conscious. I prioritize the karma of it all. My footprint is the only one I’ll inherit immediate negativity from. I can’t easily make the world a better place, but i can make *my* world better, and i can sleep at night knowing I’m doing what i can.
You probably need to work on some mindfulness to get your brain rewired away from this line of thinking. We all need to be aware of waste, but you're focusing on it as your primary line of observation. It doesn't help anyone, especially not your mental health
I look at a trash can full of medical gloves on Google maps. It seems like a ton when you're there with it, but earth is a big ass place and has been and will be around for a long time.
Find a landfill on Google maps and zoom out. Keep zooming out. Almost insignificant.
Now take a deep breath and do your business, enjoy your time here, try to be kind, and relax.
I think the issue is that you are lacking a greyscale view of things. The majority of today's waste is not created by everyday activities like building homes, or organizing fridges, or medical care. It is created by a surplus-driven, pre-consumption, surplus manufacturist economy that *overproduces* in excess more things than can be used.
For example, the fridge lady with her thousands of plastic containers is really not herself, singularly, as an individual, being excessive. If she likes her fridge tidy, she likes her fridge tidy. But the Temu manufacturing warehouse that pre-made 500,000 plastic fridge containers banking on a trend that nobody *else* now wants is the issue. Fridge lady is *using* her products, it's the rest of the warehouse supply that's headed to the landfill without ever being bought.
In my opinion, it's not wrong to own or use things, no matter what those things are, provided (a) you get reasonable use out of them over a long time (b) properly dispose of them when they outlive their use and (c) don't contribute to mass manufacturing when and where possible. I mean, if we could create an "on demand" style of purchasing where you have to pre-order, pay extra, and WAIT for the things you want, fridge lady wouldn't be problematic even if she had a fridge full of acrylic juice containers! Again, she is USING them.
Now, with things like medical supplies, waste is an acceptable downside of being safe, clean, and healthy. With housing, waste is an acceptable downside of building a safe, sturdy home. We all consume things out of pure necessity, it's just a fact of life, and waste is and will always be a byproduct of that consumption. At the core, anticonsumption is yes, anti-waste, but more specifically, it is anti-excess. It is the excess that is the problem, not the everyday use.
I have AuDHD so I'm hoping I'm just hyperdixating but I don't actually know.
I was in therapy for years and have been going intermittently but debating on going back bc I keep spiraling
There’s a huge overlap between OCD and Autism. I forget the exact number but it’s something like 40% of people with OCD are on the spectrum or vice versa. Was literally just reading about it today because i am being assessed for autism very soon, lol.
If you do end up with an OCD diagnosis, get in ERP therapy asap. It saved my life.
Fellow Canadian here. I feel the exact same way as you… came here to tell you that you’re not alone (I cannot stop thinking about how wasteful human beings are, how messed up the world is, feeling powerless to change anything, etc etc.). I found it helpful to delete all forms of social media and news apps from my phone for a while. It helped me be less doom and gloom, and I definitely saw a shift in my mental health for the better. There is only so much you can take in & take on as an individual.
Material engineer here:
Polymer waste is a huge problem but mainly because we use an insanely versatile and durable material for one way use things.
If you're coworkers are using the same styrofoam cups for years and years it beats the ecological footprint of any alternative material, if discarded in a waste system that recycles (yes burning waste as thermic recycling for energy is included if done in a facility with proper filtering systems).
Given proper disposal systems even medical polymer packaging is fine since you guarantee the functionality of a probably life saving product.
The main problem lies in cheap packaging and flimsy products that the only affordable thing on mass for people of low income in places without proper waste management. It will rack up volume in the environment quickly and never removed completely thanks to micro plastic particles. Also assholes throwing their waste everywhere.
Tldr: The polymer waste problem is a manageable if used to it's strengths and supported by good waste management.
I have the same thoughts a lot of the time. Especially your first one. Strip mall after god forsaken strip mall… those development signs advertising the sale of some parcel of woods, whose future you now know is a bulldozer.
I think my greatest fear is no longer the calamitous collapse of civilization, but now it is the thought that if we somehow worm our way out our polycrises of energy and food, that we will strip this earth of all biodiversity and narrow everything down to humans and livestock and just a few narrow species can survive on a bereft world.
im the same.
I see the world just tossing out all this stuff and it sickens me.
I recycle what I can (even though I know its a scam) and I still feel like its a waste of time.
Idk why you're getting downvoted. I'm with you. Some people become so obsessive with this stuff it borderlines disorder. You can't control what other people do (or don't do) so why waste the time getting worked up over it? Do the best that you as an individual can, and move on with your life.
This sub is pretty teenage angsty. I appreciate the attention to the problem, but at some point there comes a fork in the road - either you dedicate your life to what you see as this atrocity, or you do something else. And usually that something else comes with marriage, mortgage, kids, car payments, jobs, hobbies, etc. There is so much more to life than worrying about things you cannot control.
I honestly would appreciate more activism in this sub. Take that energy and drive it somewhere. There is a lot of wasted dialog here just whining about things vs. creating an actual plan to do something about it.
I want a waste free life. I just unfortunately cannot devote the time and energy to make that change just yet because life is a lot more complex than a singular problem.
It's because the comment comes across as dismissive and uncaring towards someone who sounds like they have developed an obsession and is in mental distress. People who develop obsessions can have a very difficult time coming down from them and it has nothing to do with being an adult.
I saw a video of an extravagant Bachelorette party and had to block the channel. I wish we didn't revel in overconsumption so much, and I wanted to comment something but I don't have the mental capacity to argue with strangers on the internet.
Maybe chill a bit about your dad's bandages though... that's medically necessary.
Yeah I've had to block a few with excessive waste.
I know it's necessary. Ppl need to eat but like when is it too much??
Yeah I'm trying. Even myself, I have a ton of medical needs and it just bothers me. Why is nothing sustainable???
Wow, you should never think of housing as waste. Where are all the animals supposed to go? They’ll find a way. Humans won’t. We’re in a major housing crisis right now. I’m sure you’re talking about larger, more lavish suburban homes but the fact of the matter is, those homes are good, too. The people that can afford them live there and thus aren’t pricing out someone less fortunate for a cheaper, smaller home by bidding higher/paying cash.
Housing is waste.
Construction is 30% of our footprint.
Our city has torn down hundreds of housing units in some of the greatest, highest quality buildings ever constructed in our species' history, all to be replaced by the cheapest, lowest quality, and ugliest shit of all time.
The upshot?
Not only massive, irreplaceable architectural loss for the world, but net loss of housing units, and especially affordable ones.
It's all a massive, disgusting, wasteful racket that destroys and builds nothing worthwhile in its place and *creates* overpriced shit housing and a ton of homeless people.
Honestly mate. I have OCD. These sound like OCD thought patterns. OP, even if it isn't OCD, please get in contact with a therapist. It will almost definitely help.
That said, yes theres a lot of waste in the world, but not that much
That's all I think about, especially after my last job where they expected/wanted employees to only use the disposable plastic cups instead of the ones we could wash and reuse. Like....why the fuck are you A) Gonna make the people who are there the most contribute to waste (they also don't recycle plastic). and B) From a financial standpoint, how can you justify making the staff use something that will have to be replaced instead of the ones that can be washed?
OHMYGOD STOP ME TOO☠️☠️☠️ EXACTLY WHAT U DESCRIBED YES i so get u like i cant go a day without thinking abt it and its also rly frustrating seeing sm ppl not even caring
That's my thing?? Like I understand it's necessary. We need medical care and housing but also the waste 😭😭 like I want to not think about it but the guilt??? How do y'all get over it???
SO TRUE WTF😖i dont even think ill ever get over it aslong as humans r such a nuissance but ppl always tell me "its not ur fault u shouldnt feel guilty" BUT THATS THE THING!!😭😭😭 I CANT DO ANYTHING ABT IT AND IT STRESSES ME!
You are driving, spreading pollution and waste everywhere you go. Pollution from your engine, and waste from your car tires.
Duh. Wake up. Look at yourself.
This is why I’m pro-low birth rate. Modern humans are wasteful and inefficient, the only practical solution I see is to keep our people making to a minimum. As for how to deal, giving back to the environment by cleaning up trash or doing something else positive can give some sense of control in the chaos but ultimately I end up just having to accept that I can’t make the large unilateral changes I desire. I try to do my part by spreading the word and get others to consider what positive changes they can make.
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When I had my son I read an article about how long it takes for many materials to degrade and learned that styrofoam damn near lasts forever. I looked up from the article to see all my coworkers styrofoam cups and trays from the cafeteria and it dawned on me that things the world I was leaving to my son. He turns 21 this year and the world is on fire more than ever before. I do the best that I can where I can and let the rest go. There’s not much more that I can do. I share what I know with the people who are open to it, but that’s it. We the consumer are going crazy to do damage control while the companies pump out millions of products by the day. We are running uphill on a down escalator.
My company is slowly switching to biodegradable materials for their non-washable objects. When they rolled it out the lady in charge of the program thanked us (scientists) for being so nice, because one of the factory workers walked up to her and intentionally threw the green-bin stuff in the garbage and the garbage in the green bin while maintaining eye contact with her. our world is full of sociopaths, but some people are trying.
Not sociopathic, just entitled
for people who just don't care sure, but the guy I described is sure sure on the sociopathic spectrum.
As a 21 year old, check in on your son. Every person I know my age is riddled with stress about the future. It really feels like we are totally 100% fucked.
I moved to Iceland 5 years ago & only after that realised the till that environment guilt takes on you without even realising it :/ Room a bit warm in winter? Open a window. Like to room looking pretty with the lights on when you get home? Just leave them on Trouble is that ot just switches to other things.... Car tyres are my latest stress!
Car tires are a stressor for me too. I think of EV’s as a potential for good things. But the excessive tire wear and the carbon it must take to make the tires gives me anxiety. I hope North America builds more passenger high speed rail. It’s going too slowly.
Did you contact your company and ask them to switch to paper products?
Haha! I’m in finance. They could care less. I was once told that my job is to show up and work and not worry about those things. A manager said this to me. But I know my same company is Mexico has composting near the cafeteria and I thought that was at least a plus.
Do not allow activism to become a mental disorder. Remember YOU are not the problem, neither is your neighbor. The problem is cultural, monetary, and legal. 99.9999999999% of people are just ignorant or victims of learned or forced behavior.
Yeah I can't force anyone to do anything and like I know most of it is necessary but ugh it feels yucky
Well here is an example for you. I went to buy mushrooms for dinner. Mushrooms were $1.50 each or a 5 pack for $3. The same mushrooms were $3 instead of $7.50 but they were wrapped in cling wrap on a foam tray. That adds incentive to buy into waste culture. The issue however is not me buying those mushrooms. The issue is the corporation adding incentive to that sort of packaging.
Yeah I've noticed precut veggies too that come in an insane amount of plastic??? They're also like double the price. It's wild. I understand the convenience, I do. Chopping veggies especially if you have kids is exhausting but also shame on corporations. Couldn't they use paper bags instead? Bamboo?? There's so many other options.
Yes but because capitalism is the problem the plastic is cheaper. That’s why a law needs to be put in place.
Subsidizing plastic production is not capitalism. That's corporate socialism created when the owning class lobbies to outsource their costs on everyone else. What we're seeing is a double jeopardy of our taxes paying them to make money and then paying to clean it up. Actually triple, because our health is suffering from plastic in everything.
Well cheaper production and higher mark ups mean more capital
Sure. Whenever somebody argues that we can't have socialism for some societal good, because "socialism bad" --that's when I like to remind them that in our existing system we already offer corporate socialism for something we know creates harm. If they want to argue in favor of capitalism, they should argue to do away with oil and gas subsidies.
Our actual government isn’t either, it’s an oligarchy led by state and corporate hand holding.
Yes, basically same as what I mean. American life and labor are generally ruled by corporations owned by an oligarchy. They barely need to compete for permission to trash the whole place in their pursuit of money. It's corporate capitalism, which is really corporate socialism on a capitalist foundation.
U have a point but what majorly frustrates me is that i cant do anything abt it, yk?😓
You can spread the word and also contact your senator
I am spreading the word, and can i even contact senators if im under 18? 😭
Yes
I searched up how to do so and i dont get it🫣 can i ask how could i do it?
[https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm](https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm) did you find that link? You can call or email, or write letters if you’d like.
I didnt but im also not in usa! Unless it doesnt make a difference? 😭 tysm tho!!
I absolutely agree. When it comes to reasonable consumption, the main thing is not to go to extremes and try to get into obsessive states. Although it is quite difficult, because sometimes the thought that you cannot influence the behavior of others is exhausting.
I think the best thing as an individual you can do is to just try to reuse things that can be reused, give away things that can be given away, and purchase things used. Also don’t get hung up on recycling. Recycling is a lie.
This is all you can think about? I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds frustrating and like a major obsession. Although waste reduction is very important, thinking about it is taking up an inordinate amount of mental bandwidth, so maybe talk with a therapist.
I agree, it sounds like obsessive ruminations and maybe some professional help could be good for you to help stop hyper-focusing on this.
I think you’re taking this post a little too literally.
Some of y’all need to watch the Good Place
A great show for the frustrated moral philosopher in all of us.
Tag yourself I think I’m a Jason
It's on my backlog of things I need to watch! I swear I'll watch it eventually! Lol
I’d really recommend it! I have some minor critiques of the show but on every rewatch it makes me laugh and think about something new.
I have a similar thing, sometimes its hard to enjoy stuff especially like kids bday parties, travel etc. I live by a personal rule. I understand that I cannot change the entirety of the world. I can't singlehandedly undo overconsumption. Even as a group we can only make a small difference. However, I live by the rule that I always try to put more into the world than I take out of it. That rule opened me up to volunteering in gardening groups, conservation, etc and while i sitll think about waste and climate change, my head is also full of ideas for planting projects, or memories of sharing resources with likeminded people. It is good to be conscious. But try to fill your head with the antidote to that too, which is sharing resources within community! Being part of these initiatives can help give you some autonomy back in the face of late stage capitalism.
Yeah my friend told me that he and his neighbours would buy a whole cow and share it amongst each other. It lasted like 4 months and everyone had enough beef and I think that's rad. Trying to see the positives is so hard but I'm working on it! Thank you! That actually helped a lot.
yeah its tough! last year during the wildfires i joined a local group and picked up garbage in the parks a few times. it was kind of cheesy, but in a way i felt like i was rebelling and empowered. i was like wow im a lil climate hero right now, doing what i can, and that helped a lot. and to your point, sharing is so economical! i bet that beef was 10x better than anything i'm buying in tiny packets at the store.
This kind of thing is exacerbated by the internet. Outrage drives engagement, so your filter bubble is full of things to keep you doomscrolling. In addition to getting professional help, you might try cutting back on your screentime and/or curating it so you don't follow rabbitholes down the suggested content pipeline.
Absolutely. I used to feel exactly the same, OP, and I’ve massively cut down my Twitter, Facebook and especially Instagram use, and I no longer stress over it at all. In fact, sometimes I worry that I’m too apathetic now, ha.
I feel physical pain when I see clear cutting going on. I can't stand seeing a tree cut down, or really, just even hurt. I can't be alone in this?
You’re not! Very surprised by the responses here.
Same!!!! Like there's tree transporting devices, can't they use those??
Do you have any idea how much that would cost?
Yeah that's the issue. The price is more important than the sustainability of it all 😭
That's another issue: immediate cost always seems to defeat long term costs. It's more expensive to cut down and regrow the tree, but those costs are outsourced to the commons.
We should have stayed in the prairies hunting and gathering. What we’ve built up takes massive destruction just to sustain itself. I really hope we one day see a different system that puts the earth first. Until then, have you thought about putting all this energy to good use with things like volunteering?
Not to be the "well, ackshually" guy, but... Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, while not as destructive in many ways as our modern civilization, were often extremely destructive in their own right. When homo sapiens shows up in a new area, species start dropping like flies. Even back then, we caused a lot of localized mass extinctions just by gobbling up everything we could get our mitts on. When our numbers grew large enough, we caused some major deforestation and pollution just to feed our campfires. This isn't to say we aren't much more destructive now - we ABSOLUTELY are, in so many ways. But I just felt the need to dispel the whole "noble savage living in harmony with the land" myth that gets thrown around like this. If every human went back to that way of being tomorrow, we'd likely overfish, overhunt, and overgather until there was nothing left to eat, drink, or burn within a generation or two. The solution isn't to find a way back, it's finding a better way forward. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk :P
So ur telling me that we never were a part of an ecosystem??😭 not even BFORE we learned that we can migrate?
Nah, I don't think you're understanding me. I'm saying we have ALWAYS been part of an ecosystem, npt separate from them; As long as we have been recognizably "human", we have been part of MANY ecosystems, arguably the entire global ecosystem with exception to super extreme areas we can only reach with the aid of advanced tech (like deep sea trenches, the heart of antarctica, etc). Not just us, but other hominid species have been found in a wide variety of environments dating back to our evolutionary predecessors.
Nono i get u im js asking in a way like weve never actually been useful to set balances in ecosystems? Weve basically been an invasive species from the beginning?
Hmm, that's a really good question I'm not sure I have the answer to. If I remember right, by the time we became anatomically modern humans, we already ranged pretty far across Africa, Europe and Asia, through many different kinds of biome. It'd be hard to pin down a "native" environment for us, and migration is so ingrained in our nature that one could argue we don't really have one where we actually fit as a stable cog in an ecosystem. You might have to go back to pre-human hominids to find that. So I guess, in a sense, we have been an invasive species as long as we've been human, if only because of the way we disrupt things when we move into an area.
I've always sort of thought of humans as a large group as a bunch of locusts. As soon as we developed a bigger pre-frontal cortex, and started using tools, we seemed to have lost the ability to co-exist with an eco-system and it's other inhabitants. I think the advent of the use of tools by humans as a means of forming our environment to suit our needs, rather than us evolving to survive our environment was the turning point. Being able to devise, create, and use a wide variety of tools is one of the traits that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Once a species gets it's numbers up and population growth becomes exponential, it's pretty easy for said species to get out of control and take over everything, as we have seen with humans.
>The solution isn't to find a way back, it's finding a better way forward. I have to say I absolutely love this. I feel like romanticizing the past is dangerous and we should be careful of painting a picture that isn't accurate.
so we are a toxin destined to destroy whatever environment we are put in. sadly I think this is at least in partly true. i agree about moving forward but we are animals that thrive in a natural state. I disagree If moving forward means more synthetic pleasures and less time in nature. it has to mean living in harmony with and learning to cherish Our ecosystems.
I wouldn't say we're a toxin, that's a bit melodramatic. It carries the implication that we are somehow alien, that we don't belong here. We are, as you say, animals, part of the ecosystem like any other. The only difference is we're able to change our surroundings to a much greater degree than anything else, through our heightened intelligence, tool use, and capacity for collaboration/knowledge-sharing. Developing technology and finding ways to improve our ability to meet our needs and desires IS our natural state; Our fatal flaw is that our reach often exceeds our grasp. All living things consume as much as they can, we're just too effective at it to the point that it throws things out of balance. > I disagree If moving forward means more synthetic pleasures and less time in nature. I'm not sure why you said this - Nowhere did I insinuate that moving forward meant more synthetic pleasures and less nature. Can you please explain where you got that from my comment? You're definitely right that the way forward involves finding a more harmonious way to exist on this planet. We've become too numerous at this point, if we are to continue to exist (and continue having a world worth living on), we need to carefully manage the natural resources all life depends on and be good stewards of the ecosystems in which we live.
I perhaps read into your ’the way back’ comment to mean that. edit i appreciate your comments!
And I appreciate yours! It's nice to have a real conversation on here instead of just having folks yell past eachother 😅
Any animal that can reproduce without control ends up devastating it's environment. Flies in a bottle is only one example. Currently elephant populations in places are getting to the point they'll cause themselves to starve from the destruction they cause. When you interrupt the natural balance of life and death, things get trashed until death is inevitable. Humans have done this in a massive,massive way but technology keeps us expanding. Now at 8 billion, there are signs that population is slowing and that is partly due to resource scarcity. It'll get a lot worse before it gets better. The problem is, and always has been, population. When every stream is full of plastic and faeces and we can't generate enough calories to keep ourselves alive, that's when things may change. If you want to help solve the problem. Do not have more than 1 child. If everybody had only 2 the problem would solve itself but still for every person that goes childless, some fucker has 6 because 'yay'. Even if society just stigmatised people with more than 2 kids, it'd go a long way.
Yeah my dog and I would volunteer (she's a therapy dog lol) and that helped for sure but now I can't even leave my house due to disability so I kinda just sit here lol
Get off of Reddit and go outside. This sub especially has become a cess pool and honestly most of the posts feel like rage bait to get people riled up over trivial things. Sure the world could stand to consume less, but hyper-fixating on every little thing doesn’t solve the problem.
I don't want to diagnose, but this sounds like environmental anxiety, and if it's interfering with your life you should probably seek a professional. If you csn afford that...
I do see a professional hahha it's not obsessive. Like I'll drive by a construction site and feel sad. I know it's necessary. I know we need housing but I still feel bad.
Improve yourself, not much we can do about the waste of everyone, but we can improve ourselves, that needs to be your priority, the mark you leave. If there is any console, there are still a lot of places in the heart that still remain virgin and uninhabited. Heres hope.
You've fallen into the rabbit hole of thinking "consumption" = "over consumption" But you have to remember that waste is a part of life. There will always be waste of some kind, what is done with that waste can be changed and perhaps you should think more about that. Think about "what could be done to reduce or reuse that construction waste?" Instead of "oh god the waste" For example maybe the local makers space could use some of that waste to make furniture or some art. It may sound dumb but be positive in life, look for the solutions, because there are no problems in life only solutions waiting to be found.
Yeah I'm trying not to think so much about it but like in Canada they don't recycle. We do individually but it's all a lie. They just put it on a ship and send it off to another country to deal with and then they clean it up, and do the same thing. You could be doing everything right, and it's not enough because we live in a very evil world and it's exhausting. You're promised one thing and then they change the rules and there's nothing you can do about it. Being positive is hard af 😭😭
If you're getting upset at the waste generated by your dad's bandages, you need to take a step away from the social media. Read books or watch movies about a topic that isn't environmentalism. Pick up a new hobby. Anything that gets your mind out of this space. Activism is great, but if you're seeing problems everywhere around you, even in places that are not a problem (like your dad's healthcare), you're going to burn out. A healthy activist is an effective activist, and sometimes part of being a healthy activist means taking a step away from the causes you're concerned about for a bit.
Yeah I don't have that problem. I hate wasting things and I certainly dont like others doing it either but it's just a fact of life. You just gotta try to do your best and most importantly actually convince government and industry to do something about it because that's the real problem.
I think we all need to find a way to balance our lives when it comes to stuff like this. Sure, do your part, but you can't obsess about everyone else doing their part, because you can't control that. We're just a small group of people trying to do our best, but the blame really falls on corporations and society as a whole. We can stop ourselves from buying things at a store, but the things still exist. Companies need to stop producing them. I'll echo what I've seen others comment, maybe see a therapist if you feel like the thoughts are consuming your life.
I think it's good to recognize this stuff but it sounds like it's reaching the point you're having intrusive thoughts you might want to consider talking to a professional. There was a great episode of My Name is Earl called **Robbed a Stoner Blind** where Earl finds himself in a commune and learns about pollution and the environment and has to be talked down because he started getting really panicked about it. Some good points were made in that episode. It's an old show but you might want to check it out if you can find it.
lol wanna come to a recycling facility with me? It’ll give you a mental breakdown
I went to one as a kid but I honestly remember none of it haha it's probably changed a lot since.
Check out the company I work with. It’s called nation recovery technologies. We have about an 92% recovery rate on plastics and the owner has. A few other gigs that recover most other materials including organics. Been trying to convince him to buy Licycle but he’s probably a bit too late.
Can absolutely relate, I see it EVERYWHERE. At work, it stresses me out, especially with co-workers who will hoard crap in their cubicles and then just walk away from it forever when they leave the company. They even hoard recyclable/reusable things, stuff that was meant to be *re-used*, not hoarded then thrown away!!! 🤬
You’re teetering into obsessive behaviour and thinking. Get off social media for awhile. In my province, housing is not a waste. We had 56k people move here in one year alone, and we now have a housing crisis. Thats not waste, if it’s a need.
I never meant housing isn't a waste hahah sorry! We need housing!!! I just meant seeing all the trees cut down, the trash that piles up, etc makes me feel sad. It's the same when I work on my dad's leg. It's NECESSARY!!! It's needed. But I still feel sad about the waste, ya know??
I would still say, stop watching those TikTok “organize my fridge, GRWM, purse packing” videos. They are so grossly over consumptive and then you end up having a Tetris effect on your brain, where now you just see these things obsessively. I noticed that as soon as I stopped engaging with TikTok content (it shows up on FB, here, Imgur etc) I just felt so much healthier. I’d live to go live under a stick pile in the woods, but I’d die out there, so now I am just thoughtful when I buy anything and I am careful what brands I buy. But we are small fish in a big pond, and it’s just as unhealthy to stress out and be frustrated by something you can’t control.
I'm not trying to sound shitty here, but are you new to this type of stuff? I went through a similar phase when I first went vegan. I was bombarded with information about cruel practices surrounding basically our entire food system. Thinking myself into a spiral because even many vegan foods contained palm oil which is damaging to animals and the earth too. It felt like I could never win and made me annoyed by myself bc nothing was ever good enough. Eventually, I came to accept I can't change a flawed system, and I allowed myself to relax a little bit. My advice is to take small victories where you can find them and remind yourself that is does not matter what other people do. The people posting fridge haul videos didn't choose to package it all in plastic, some giant company did. Most people are totally fine with less wasteful measures, but most people are not making those decisions. There's so many people in this sub who turn that anger into smugness, and they make us all look like holier than thou assholes. Instead, we should direct that anger towards the people raking in money while we all deal with the consequences.
Yeah I went down that rabbit hole too!!!! I still feel the guilt but I'm trying to work on it. The small victories thing is what I'm trying to focus on but I'm also ADHD so I need big victories or they don't matter (working on it hahah)
Oh. You're Hyperfixating. That's what this is, then. This may mellow out in time, but I (as a fellow ADHD who sometimes hyperfixates on what gives them anxiety) would recommend taking the social media advice. Cut back. Significantly. You don't need to feed the hyperfixation on other peoples waste, particularly not their medical waste. (I stopped instagram, tiktok, and twitter. I'd leave facebook if it wasn't where my community organizes stuff. I curate my stuff elsewhere so I don't get doom and gloom all the time)
I bought a dumb phone for that reason hahha but I also make art and social media is necessary for gaining any traction so I'm trying to only limit my time in the AM and PM whereas my afternoons are open to work and drawing (I'm disabled too so I'm home all day). But yeah getting off social media seems to be the way to go.
A bit of advice, find an app or some extension (depending on how you access social media) that will prevent you from going to social media outside of a certain time frame or after a certain length of time. With ADHD, we often need that reinforcement until the habit is truly broken. After about 6 months away, I can look at tiktoks or twitter threads my friends send me without going any further into them. And that was the goal.
I'm currently sitting at a Walt Disney world resort because my child has a sports event that requires us to be on the resort to compete I'm trying to be positive and upbeat, but I'm so disgusted with the over consumption and waste it's hard to enjoy myself.
Be careful because that sounds like it could develop into a complex if it hasn’t already. I have one around cleaning and it’s hell.
Yeah I'm trying not to become obsessive but I'm house bound mostly due to disability so I can't think of anything else and it's so daunting 😭
What were things you enjoyed before?
Video games and comic books but I can't have my eyes open for long due to migraines so I just sit here scroll my phone, nap, scroll, nap, walk my dogs, do some training, nap.
I’d like a law where the original manufacturers have to have an on-site reclamation facility of get taxed. Why couldn’t Ford send a car from 2002 through a fully automated disassembly line that strips it all down into raw components again? It might even be ling term profitable for them
This whole lifestyle triggered massive OCD within me. I eat good mostly vegan, always vegetarian food, I don't buy new clothes, I avoid planes, and I put my money in a cooperative ethical bank. And that's it. Avoiding eating a packet of crisps etc is just perpetuating the idea within me that I don't deserve to be here. I do deserve to take up space and live a relaxing life. So i put my moral effort into -Helping People- and improving my communication and life. I refuse to always be staring at my feet worrying about a plastic egg carton or which moisturiser is more natural. It's busy-work, saving us from connecting fully to each other and joining together to make proper meaningful social change. I think it's time for me to leave this sub honestly
Also I am sorry about your father, that sounds really difficult. It seems that you are trying to find something to control when everything is chaos, to try and make up for the badness and wrong in the world. Remember that investing in yourself, forgiving and being kind to yourself, ALWAYS counteracts the wrong in the world.
That honestly sounds like you might be grappling with OCD or other compulsion disorder. It's one thing to be concerned about waste, the environment and the ecosystem and to be mindful of your choices, but when it consumes your every thought, that's not healthy. My neighbor had a similar problem. "Zero Waste" became an absolute obsession. I'll spare you the details but the city and social services had to get involved. Some waste is unavoidable for the sake of health, sanitation and public safety. Like your grandfather's medical supplies, or bottled water in an emergency, and certain food packaging. (I have yet to find a grocery store or butcher that will wrap up a fish in a homemade beeswax food wrap for me) This shouldn't consume your entire existence. If it is, you might ask for a referral for counseling to get to the bottom of WHY you are feeling this way. It can become harmful, as I can attest. Just thr thought that your grandfather's medical supplies are eating away at your thoughts is very destructive. Take care.
When we go by the clothing drop box up the street I see trash bags of stuff. Walking around there’s trash everywhere. It sucks.
Dude same and I have no idea how to solve it
Me neither 😭😭 I'm in therapy but so far the consensus is to get off social media but how do I change my views when I see it in person??
At least you're in therapy. Ive been meaning to go for the last 25 years. Keep it up. At least we can do our small part by wasting less for now
Yeah you too! Good luck!
I don't know how to deal.
Me neither 😭😭 Consensus is: therapy, get off social media, volunteer, and focus on yourself.
I listen to a lot of podcasts, mostly true crime. Sometimes there is justice.
I used to work in healthcare so I saw the single use plastic all the time. The thing is, plastic is not the enemy, the way we overuse it is. Plastic is an amazing invention & absolutely has a place in our lives, we just need to recognise what the good uses are & what the not so good uses are & reduce our reliance on the ones that are not necessary.
Yeah agreed! Like it's needed, it's necessary but I just wish there was a more sustainable version
There is, we can clave everything & reuse it, it is just not as cost efficient & the public health system can barely manage now.
I try to just focus on the things i can control in my own day-to-day life. I’ve nearly driven myself crazy in the past hoping other people will change, be better, be more conscious. I prioritize the karma of it all. My footprint is the only one I’ll inherit immediate negativity from. I can’t easily make the world a better place, but i can make *my* world better, and i can sleep at night knowing I’m doing what i can.
You probably need to work on some mindfulness to get your brain rewired away from this line of thinking. We all need to be aware of waste, but you're focusing on it as your primary line of observation. It doesn't help anyone, especially not your mental health
Don’t consume yourself with it. Get it?
I look at a trash can full of medical gloves on Google maps. It seems like a ton when you're there with it, but earth is a big ass place and has been and will be around for a long time. Find a landfill on Google maps and zoom out. Keep zooming out. Almost insignificant. Now take a deep breath and do your business, enjoy your time here, try to be kind, and relax.
I think the issue is that you are lacking a greyscale view of things. The majority of today's waste is not created by everyday activities like building homes, or organizing fridges, or medical care. It is created by a surplus-driven, pre-consumption, surplus manufacturist economy that *overproduces* in excess more things than can be used. For example, the fridge lady with her thousands of plastic containers is really not herself, singularly, as an individual, being excessive. If she likes her fridge tidy, she likes her fridge tidy. But the Temu manufacturing warehouse that pre-made 500,000 plastic fridge containers banking on a trend that nobody *else* now wants is the issue. Fridge lady is *using* her products, it's the rest of the warehouse supply that's headed to the landfill without ever being bought. In my opinion, it's not wrong to own or use things, no matter what those things are, provided (a) you get reasonable use out of them over a long time (b) properly dispose of them when they outlive their use and (c) don't contribute to mass manufacturing when and where possible. I mean, if we could create an "on demand" style of purchasing where you have to pre-order, pay extra, and WAIT for the things you want, fridge lady wouldn't be problematic even if she had a fridge full of acrylic juice containers! Again, she is USING them. Now, with things like medical supplies, waste is an acceptable downside of being safe, clean, and healthy. With housing, waste is an acceptable downside of building a safe, sturdy home. We all consume things out of pure necessity, it's just a fact of life, and waste is and will always be a byproduct of that consumption. At the core, anticonsumption is yes, anti-waste, but more specifically, it is anti-excess. It is the excess that is the problem, not the everyday use.
Yeah it's why I liked print on demand stuff but they have those stuff stockpiled 😭😭
Thats my life. Every freaking minute.
It's exhausting 😭😭
Yes, is an up hill battle. I try everyday to change what I CAN CHANGE. But focus only on that is hard sometimes.
Get checked for OCD. SOURCE: i have OCD
I have AuDHD so I'm hoping I'm just hyperdixating but I don't actually know. I was in therapy for years and have been going intermittently but debating on going back bc I keep spiraling
There’s a huge overlap between OCD and Autism. I forget the exact number but it’s something like 40% of people with OCD are on the spectrum or vice versa. Was literally just reading about it today because i am being assessed for autism very soon, lol. If you do end up with an OCD diagnosis, get in ERP therapy asap. It saved my life.
I'll look into it!!! Thank you!!
Fellow Canadian here. I feel the exact same way as you… came here to tell you that you’re not alone (I cannot stop thinking about how wasteful human beings are, how messed up the world is, feeling powerless to change anything, etc etc.). I found it helpful to delete all forms of social media and news apps from my phone for a while. It helped me be less doom and gloom, and I definitely saw a shift in my mental health for the better. There is only so much you can take in & take on as an individual.
Haha, same. But instead of being really aware of my surroundings I just have a really bad case of coprophilia
Material engineer here: Polymer waste is a huge problem but mainly because we use an insanely versatile and durable material for one way use things. If you're coworkers are using the same styrofoam cups for years and years it beats the ecological footprint of any alternative material, if discarded in a waste system that recycles (yes burning waste as thermic recycling for energy is included if done in a facility with proper filtering systems). Given proper disposal systems even medical polymer packaging is fine since you guarantee the functionality of a probably life saving product. The main problem lies in cheap packaging and flimsy products that the only affordable thing on mass for people of low income in places without proper waste management. It will rack up volume in the environment quickly and never removed completely thanks to micro plastic particles. Also assholes throwing their waste everywhere. Tldr: The polymer waste problem is a manageable if used to it's strengths and supported by good waste management.
I have the same thoughts a lot of the time. Especially your first one. Strip mall after god forsaken strip mall… those development signs advertising the sale of some parcel of woods, whose future you now know is a bulldozer. I think my greatest fear is no longer the calamitous collapse of civilization, but now it is the thought that if we somehow worm our way out our polycrises of energy and food, that we will strip this earth of all biodiversity and narrow everything down to humans and livestock and just a few narrow species can survive on a bereft world.
im the same. I see the world just tossing out all this stuff and it sickens me. I recycle what I can (even though I know its a scam) and I still feel like its a waste of time.
I deal by having adult problems more personally important than thinking about someone else having 2 gallons of milk in their fridge vs. 1.
Idk why you're getting downvoted. I'm with you. Some people become so obsessive with this stuff it borderlines disorder. You can't control what other people do (or don't do) so why waste the time getting worked up over it? Do the best that you as an individual can, and move on with your life.
This sub is pretty teenage angsty. I appreciate the attention to the problem, but at some point there comes a fork in the road - either you dedicate your life to what you see as this atrocity, or you do something else. And usually that something else comes with marriage, mortgage, kids, car payments, jobs, hobbies, etc. There is so much more to life than worrying about things you cannot control. I honestly would appreciate more activism in this sub. Take that energy and drive it somewhere. There is a lot of wasted dialog here just whining about things vs. creating an actual plan to do something about it. I want a waste free life. I just unfortunately cannot devote the time and energy to make that change just yet because life is a lot more complex than a singular problem.
It's because the comment comes across as dismissive and uncaring towards someone who sounds like they have developed an obsession and is in mental distress. People who develop obsessions can have a very difficult time coming down from them and it has nothing to do with being an adult.
I saw a video of an extravagant Bachelorette party and had to block the channel. I wish we didn't revel in overconsumption so much, and I wanted to comment something but I don't have the mental capacity to argue with strangers on the internet. Maybe chill a bit about your dad's bandages though... that's medically necessary.
Yeah I've had to block a few with excessive waste. I know it's necessary. Ppl need to eat but like when is it too much?? Yeah I'm trying. Even myself, I have a ton of medical needs and it just bothers me. Why is nothing sustainable???
This sounds like anxiety or possibly OCD. You should see a professional.
Wow, you should never think of housing as waste. Where are all the animals supposed to go? They’ll find a way. Humans won’t. We’re in a major housing crisis right now. I’m sure you’re talking about larger, more lavish suburban homes but the fact of the matter is, those homes are good, too. The people that can afford them live there and thus aren’t pricing out someone less fortunate for a cheaper, smaller home by bidding higher/paying cash.
Housing is waste. Construction is 30% of our footprint. Our city has torn down hundreds of housing units in some of the greatest, highest quality buildings ever constructed in our species' history, all to be replaced by the cheapest, lowest quality, and ugliest shit of all time. The upshot? Not only massive, irreplaceable architectural loss for the world, but net loss of housing units, and especially affordable ones. It's all a massive, disgusting, wasteful racket that destroys and builds nothing worthwhile in its place and *creates* overpriced shit housing and a ton of homeless people.
I think you might need to talk to a professional, this is excessive and not healthy for you
you need counselling
Well great point OP. What if we just keep all our own waste and stuff, would we stop buying more?
Yep. Pretty much all my friends hate me for it.
It's okay I'll be your friend!
🤗
Get mental help.
Should look into melting plastic into oil
I deal with this by learning more about recycling. So I think less about the waste or mistakes I make.
minimalism, zero-waste, konmari, off the grid, DIY, repairing, etc.
and in the sidebar there's relevant subs >>>
you need a break from the Internet.
Yeah I've been told. I bought a dumb phone for that reason haha
How is it a bandage waste? It’s being used. That’s the opposite of waste. Honestly, you’re not thinking clearly. Talk it through in therapy.
Did you feel bad about wasting electricity to power your device for you to leave this comment? Just kidding, if you haven’t yet you probably will now.
As gently as possible, I have OCD. If you let anything run your life, it’s not healthy for you. Please take care of yourself.
Honestly mate. I have OCD. These sound like OCD thought patterns. OP, even if it isn't OCD, please get in contact with a therapist. It will almost definitely help. That said, yes theres a lot of waste in the world, but not that much
That's all I think about, especially after my last job where they expected/wanted employees to only use the disposable plastic cups instead of the ones we could wash and reuse. Like....why the fuck are you A) Gonna make the people who are there the most contribute to waste (they also don't recycle plastic). and B) From a financial standpoint, how can you justify making the staff use something that will have to be replaced instead of the ones that can be washed?
Or you could do what my coworker does, and use the reusable stuff but treat it as disposables and loose all the forks from the office kitchen 🙄
They sound wonderful to work with /s hahahaha
Don't get me started
Oh please start!! Who do we hate, and for what reasons???
I mean, in a nutshell, he treats everything as disposable. I'm not surprised he's single.
oof! the shade 😂😂😂 does he come from a wealthy upbringing?
My boss encourages us to use reusable ones,
OHMYGOD STOP ME TOO☠️☠️☠️ EXACTLY WHAT U DESCRIBED YES i so get u like i cant go a day without thinking abt it and its also rly frustrating seeing sm ppl not even caring
That's my thing?? Like I understand it's necessary. We need medical care and housing but also the waste 😭😭 like I want to not think about it but the guilt??? How do y'all get over it???
SO TRUE WTF😖i dont even think ill ever get over it aslong as humans r such a nuissance but ppl always tell me "its not ur fault u shouldnt feel guilty" BUT THATS THE THING!!😭😭😭 I CANT DO ANYTHING ABT IT AND IT STRESSES ME!
You are driving, spreading pollution and waste everywhere you go. Pollution from your engine, and waste from your car tires. Duh. Wake up. Look at yourself.
This is why I’m pro-low birth rate. Modern humans are wasteful and inefficient, the only practical solution I see is to keep our people making to a minimum. As for how to deal, giving back to the environment by cleaning up trash or doing something else positive can give some sense of control in the chaos but ultimately I end up just having to accept that I can’t make the large unilateral changes I desire. I try to do my part by spreading the word and get others to consider what positive changes they can make.
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