There’s not a thing you can do as an individual that will have near the impact of countering the wealthy gross over usage of resources and industrial pollution. It’s a fools errand so don’t try to guilt people who don’t recycle.
Once it became clear that a large portion of our recycled waste was just being sold and off shored to poorer countries, I stopped giving a fuck about recycling and stopped doing it. What I did start doing was doing everything I could to eliminate plastic from my life, or reuse what I did have until it broke.
Only a small percent ends up recycled and there’s some plastics that it’s cost prohibitive to recycle. Aluminum cans is another one I try not to introduce into my life as well. They have better margins for recycling but it’s easier than plastic to not include into your purchase.
800 million people (so just the population of US, CA, and EU) doing small things can absolutely have a larger impact though. Rich bastards do have a vastly larger impact than individual normal people but using that to say “I don’t have to do anything, the others are more at fault” is not helping anyone.
There’s not a thing you can do as an individual that will have near the impact of countering the wealthy gross over usage of resources and industrial pollution. It’s a fools errand so don’t try to guilt people who don’t recycle.
Once it became clear that a large portion of our recycled waste was just being sold and off shored to poorer countries, I stopped giving a fuck about recycling and stopped doing it. What I did start doing was doing everything I could to eliminate plastic from my life, or reuse what I did have until it broke.
Only a small percent ends up recycled and there’s some plastics that it’s cost prohibitive to recycle. Aluminum cans is another one I try not to introduce into my life as well. They have better margins for recycling but it’s easier than plastic to not include into your purchase.
I’ve worked in manufacturing plants for the last almost 20 years. One packaging line will produce more waste in a day than you can hope to counter.
800 million people (so just the population of US, CA, and EU) doing small things can absolutely have a larger impact though. Rich bastards do have a vastly larger impact than individual normal people but using that to say “I don’t have to do anything, the others are more at fault” is not helping anyone.