Just doing my part 🤡

I recently visited China, to meet my wife’s extended family.

Let me tell you, the sheer amount of single-use plastics that are consumed by any individual throughout a regular day in a metropolitan environment, is absolutely and mind-numbingly depressing.

Given that there are 1.3b people there, and that no matter how much we in the US/AU/EU reduce/reuse/recycle - we will never be able to truly offset that sheer amount of plastic pollution produced.

Now I’m not saying this to be a doomer, but more-so to say that individuals can’t enact sufficient change to save this planet, we need Government and corporate incentives to shift towards sustainable alternatives, and punitive policies to disincentivise plastic production globally.

plastic waste per capita: the US is at top(if we exclude small island nations)
plastic waste in absolute terms: the US is not far behind China, with India at a distant third place.
the reduction is plastic waste generation in China is far more than that of US¹.
so, what I mean to say is that more people ≠ more pollution. but I do agree that the problem is to be tackled with active participation of the government, which won't be there because of muh economy.
[1]: By 2016, China's overall plastic waste production had fallen to 21.60 million tons, a reduction of nearly 28 million tons (for comparison, U.S. production fell less than 4 tons during the same time period). Moreover, despite being one of the largest overall producers of plastic waste, China's per capita production of plastic waste was one of the lowest in the world in 2016 at 15.6 kilograms a year per person.
- Nice!!
Lots of places in the US won't recycle the supposedly "recyclable" plastics, it ends up in a landfill regardless of what you do. I remember all the educational initiatives about the importance of recycling when I was a kid. Turns out it was all just propaganda to make us feel responsible for problems caused by corporations.
Oh man that's a drop in the bucket compared to medical/industrial/commercial plastic waste lol.
- I did the ambulance thing for a bit. CPR calls, the back of the ambulance, despite being covered in fluids, looked like a recycling center. And none of it gets recycled, obviously, all just gets red bagged or containered. Everything is individually wrapped, and for obvious reasons, but I'd have days where I could match my family's plastic use for the week or more in 12 hours.
Given that there are 1.3b people there
The majority of Chinese residents don't live in metro zones, work office jobs, and eat fast food, though.
Also, very common to find reusable metal straws (and cups and utensils) outside the US. Korea and Japan both overwhelmingly favor washable utensils, as do cities south of the US border (I stopped seeing disposables once I got outside Mexico City proper and I never saw them in Jamaica or Cozemel outside the airport/seaport). There are zero disposables in Havana. The very idea is alien to them.
- Something like 60%+ of China is urban. The majority definitely live in urban areas.
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/278566/urban-and-rural-population-of-china/

Also fuck bamboo straws and other paper straws filled with PFAS. just use a normal straw or none at all

Maybe beverages could be served in containers that don't require a straw. I wouldn't mind being served a can or a bottle instead a cardboard cup.
- The main issue is drinks with ice. But maybe we could add a retainer on top of the glass to hold the ice so we can sip directly from the cup.
Or you know, food grade stainless steel straws. No bad chemicals, doesn't turn to mush (unless exposed to temperatures of 1,400 to 1,530 °C) and fully recyclable. Some people say they are hard to wash but ive never had a problem i just stick em vertical into the silverware holder of my dishwasher and it's always gotten all the way through the straw clean.
They are cheap to produce as well. Not plastic cheap maybe but businesses could easily replace plastic straws with them without going bankrupt or anything. Easy model is just have em as an optional extra so once people already have 8 they can just use their own lol
- temperatures of 1,400 to 1,530 °C
  Well, that rules out drinking McDonald’s coffee with one then.
- I think id prefer a glass straw to metal, but i get thats not something fast food could do easily.
- What's the day to day with a metal straw like?
  At home it's simple but going to the mall with a metal straw in my pocket sounds uncomfortable
I use my own metal straw and it works great
- We have those at home too and they're the only straws I use. They just feel premium in a way.
- Despite very limited usage, metal straws have caused major injuries including fatalities. Turns out having a metal stick pointed at all sorts of sensitive soft tissue is a risk.
  Meanwhile, if using your own straw with a restaurants disposable cup, hardly helps since the cup is still being waste. If using it with reusable cups, it won't save you from any sanitation issues, since the drink is right in contact with the container. It may be useful for sanitation reasons with a can, but again, the can is disposable. Even if you recycle it, the coating on the inside and the paint on the outside probably are about as much as the plastic straw you spared.
I was recently served a long macaroni as a straw in a restaurant. It was honestly amazing how well it worked! At no point it was mushy and there's nothing in it that I wouldn't eat with my pasta dish anyway.
- They are good for some drinks but not great for others in my experience. They do get soggy after a few hours and start to dissolve a bit into the drink so if you use them at home and refill a few times over an evening they aren't great. They also react with some fizzy drinks and cause them to bubble over.

There's something about having a lot of money that makes you hate mother nature. It's weird.

Feels like to them, mother nature and environment is a hindrance to their convenience
I think once you unlocked all the luxuries that the world has to offer, the temptation gets the better of you eventually. I don't condone it, but I also can't say I wouldn't live a bit more wasteful if I had all the money in the world

Taylor Swifts private jet/boat circling the globe to pick up her boyfriend

How else do you go on a cruise while flying your jet? Checkmate, working class!
- The jet is so large it actually has its own smaller jets inside to travel from the mansion to the wave pool.

Something something, Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift going on a cruise?
- tailor swift docking her boat

notice how they wrote billionaire and not Taylor, very good

Implicitly includes Taylor though, she's not off the hook
Just all the others are also on the hook now
- Maybe if we make her feel bad about it she will give away enough to just be a millionaire
- Sure it does, but we should ask why she became the meme and not any of the other billionaires, who are overwhelmingly white men.
  It's like when I pointed out to my kid that the Karen meme is pretty sexist, they pointed out that there's also Ken. And I asked them, in all the meme compilations they watch, how many Kens are there for every ten Karens? They said, "maybe 2 or 3." I pointed out that that imbalance is the problem, and they were like, "oooohh yeah."
  A 10 year old gets this when it's explained to them simply. Anyone who pretends they don't get this is covering for something they don't want to admit.
I didn't make that meme myself but I debated changing it to something Taylor Swift related for a moment, but then I thought that horse was pretty much dead already so I just left it as it is. She's certainly not the only one doing this sort of stuff.

i really do not understand where this idea that plastic has something to do with the climate came from, how do people imagine that to work?

No, the point of not using plastic is to not have plastics blowing around on the street for 50 years before it's degraded into microplastics that instead enter our bodies.

Plastic is made from oil that is pumped up from the earth. This oil contains carbon that eventually gets released into the atmosphere.
The climate change is caused by carbon that is pumped up from the earth and released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Do you have enough imagination to see any kind of connection?
- Yeah, I see that. Actually, it's only about the carbon that is pumped up from the earth. Nothing else matters (with respect to climate change). It's doesn't even matter how many trees are cut down, as long as they re-grow.
They said " environment", not climate.
- No, no. It's beyond the environment. It's not in an environment.
Oil is processed into polymers and has plasticizers added to it to become a drinking straw, a process that emits mucho carbon.
But the image states the environment right, not specifically the climate.
Honestly, I'm just sick of picking it up on my local beach. That and plastic bags. I'm sick of picking up plastic bags.
- All of us walking around with plastic in our blood is probably an indicator of a poor environment as well
Someone always says this. Predictable now.
Some materials have higher carbon emissions than others, in terms of refinement, processing, and transportation. The third point is location dependant, but creating and shaping different materials will have different contributions to global warming.
Edit: There are also concerns with the product's end of lifespan. How long it takes to biodegrades, how easily recyclable it is, and how much the available disposal methods will effect the environment. Plastic is not great on several of these accounts. Recycling plastic water bottles isn't very efficient either, compared to glass bottles for instance.

clears throat Cave Johnson here. I've been thinking...

https://youtu.be/Dt6iTwVIiMM
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Taylor Swift needs to relax her Triangle of Sadness.

Not even a shit post

There's a different between shitpost and shit post, you know?
We aim for the former in here.

Taylor on the way to, ah forget it.

Why not use "straw" straws again?

Pasta straws seem like the obvious solution, it takes at least 5 minutes to soften in BOILING water, it's gonna last at least that long in a chilled beverage, and then if you throw it in the forest that's literally just food
I'm guessing it's because there's not as much profit for billionaires in it.
- Ah yes, I forgot.

I don't know if all these recent jet memes are people just joking around or are you people actually convinced private jets are the problem?

Taylor swift, and every single billionaire alive could be flying 24/7/365 OR NOT and it would make absolutely no difference to fighting climate change.

The main polluters are industry and farming.

All this other shit around are just distractions keeping you from actually going after the people that are causing our crisis.

I don't know if it's astroturfing or what, but it seems like it's deliberate manipulation to keep people inactive.

You memeing on Tylor or using wood straws, or recycling your soda can does fuck all. A single paper plant will dump out so much co2 and pollution that will negate the effort of millions.

Well, none of that matters anyways when China now emits almost twice as much CO2 as the US and is basically single-handedly not just absorbing all the rest of the world's reduction efforts, but increasing the global output enormously.
- Double the emissions for 4 times the people? Damn that's pretty efficient in comparison.
- the data you shared only shows half the picture. if you take into account cumulative emissions, the US isn't doing any good. it's responsible fit a quarter of emissions to date.
  
  source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions
A lot of it is political at end of day.
Taylor Swift is looking to be a supporter of the Democratic Party in US, so the Republicans are running targeted attacks on her to reduce credibility as the election is coming up.
It's nothing new but just be aware that people posting these memes may just be bots/paid marketers essentially.

let me add my contribution to this meme:

image description: a luxurious inside view of a private jet, in which another jet is flying inside.
the text above it reads, "Taylor swift yendo al baño de su jet."
lit: Taylor swift going to her jet's bathroom.

That's the equivalent of a lot of straws.

TaleSpin

The thing is billionaires will always use more resources than you. They will have more stuff. It'll have more houses. They will have boats, private planes, huge mansions, and more money than they know what to do with. They will always use more resources than you. If your whole statement is we shouldn't try to solve global warming because some people are rich, and we're doomed to all die. And by the way, The billionaires will have a nice air-conditioned bunker while the rest of us die.

I'm all for trying to solve wealth inequality, but it shouldn't get in the way of solving a major environmental disaster.

If your whole statement is we shouldn't try to solve global warming because some people are rich
I don't think that's what they're saying at all. Any solution to climate change is incomplete if it doesn't also address inequality and overconsumption
- Not just incomplete. You probably need to start with inequality. 25% of global emissions are created by the richest 1%. 50% by the richest 10%
Well, I can't help but notice it's mostly those billionaires and the people who work for them who are telling us there's a climate issue and WE need to solve it while they continue to fly everywhere on their private jets and buy more waterfront mansions they tell us will be underwater in 10 years.
So IDK man... I'm certainly not a climate scientist but something doesn't add up here.
- More people than billionaires are telling you there's a climate issue. Scientists are, normal people are, etc. It's the biggest environmental issue of our lifetimes. And there are some celebrities that are also trying to use their popularity to promote the message to get the government to create a set of rules that will actually impact out much CO2 we're putting into our atmosphere. The right-wing talking heads have found that it's really effective to point at them and say "LOOK! They have big houses! They fly around in private jets! They use more resources that 100 of you normal folks, therefore we shouldn't do anything."
  The reality is that they're using more resources than 100 of us normal folks, but there are 100k of us normal folks to each of them so we make a much more significant impact on the climate than they do. And yes, lets make the laws affect them also. But the "they're flying around in jets" talking point is lame. They're going to be flying around in jets no matter what. They're going to have big houses no matter what. So lets make them have lots of solar panels on their big houses or make flying around in private jets more expensive. That's just a reason to make the laws affect them also, it's NOT a reason to do nothing and let the world burn.

Yep. I’m all for limiting waste, but we never should’ve gotten rid of plastic straws. Paper straws DO NOT WORK. It’s as simple as that.

I’ve resorted to carrying my own straws these days, just so I don’t have to use soggy paper.

And frankly, I doubt getting rid of plastic straws had any effect anyway. They claimed here it was to protect sea turtles. I live four hours from the ocean. Unless a sea turtle knows how to use public transport, they’re not likely to get near my straw. Especially since I actually put it in the recycling bin anyway.

Plastic recycling is a lie.
I use a reusable metal straw
Are you living on a dumpster or really that naive, that you think your waste is staying where you leave it?
- Well, all I can reasonably do is put it in the correct bin for proper recycling, as they tell you to do. I would never litter; it’s antisocial as fuck.
  Once it’s collected, I have zero control over it. I assume Dutch garbage companies don’t dump my trash in the ocean, but I honestly haven’t bothered to check if they export it to somewhere else or anything like that.
You know you could just learn to drink like grown ups so you don't need to carry around special implements? My babies could pretty much drink straight from a cup or a glass before they had turned two, you can do it too
- And that’s perfectly fine to do with a soda, sure. But with a milkshake? Or a very cold slushie? You can’t really drink those like a soda. Not unless you let them melt completely, which rather defeats the purpose…
Downside is, your plastic trash probably isn't staying near where you live.
- Well, all I can reasonably do is put it in the correct bin for proper recycling, as they tell you to do. I would never litter; it’s antisocial as fuck.
  Once it’s collected, I have zero control over it. I assume Dutch garbage companies don’t dump my trash in the ocean, but I honestly haven’t bothered to check if they export it to somewhere else or anything like that.
Just be a grown up like me and always have a handy Red Vine ^tm to use as a straw.
- They don’t sell those here, unfortunately :D
Paper straws work fine?
- Not to be the "well akshually" guy, but I personally find that while paper straws are fine for most drinks, when it comes to thicker ones they really suck (no pun intended). Like, using a paper straw with a slurpee or milkshake is a nightmare.
  I'm team paper straws, but surely there's a better solution for drinks like those.
Instead of paper we should have gone stainless steel. Safe, strong, reusable, fully recyclable. Ive got a few and i love em personally but i get why people don't go outta their way to have some
- I use metal straws as well. It’s a decent option.
  As for safe, wellllll… there’s some debate on it. People have been impaled when they tripped and fell while drinking from them. They’re also a bit more difficult to clean, since you just toss a plastic straw.
- First World problems, amirite? Gotta carry your own metal straw everywhere if you don't like mushy PFAS.
- Safe, strong
  This seems to be opposing objectives for a straw. If it's strong, then it can puncture/lacerate if someone falls while carrying a drink. This has been an issue, and it has killed at least one person. I don't want my drinking straw to be that strong. Frankly I'll just skip the straw for the most part.
They should offer reusable metal straws
- They'd just get stolen and you know it.