Corporations love to tell you about how you can "save the planet" or whatever by buying things made from recycled materials, using less water, buying an efficient car, using paper straws, or <insert trending thing>
Those things might help, but the problem isn't the choices we make, it's the options we're allowed to choose from. Your options aren't optimized for eco-friendliness, they are optimized for profit.
That's why the planet is burning. It's not because you didn't recycle the pizza box.
I love how many people are like, "Well, actually, pizza boxes AREN'T recyclable..."
I know. That's precisely the point.
Domino's doesn't actually care what happens to their boxes. They can just print that on their boxes (at essentially no cost to them), make it seem like it's your problem, and wipe their hands of it. They make themselves look like saints, and externalize the cost of their behavior onto everyone else.
Now people are commenting that pizza boxes ARE recyclable.
:facepalm:
Y'all are just proving my point. Everyone is bickering back a forth about whether or not pizza boxes can be recycled... while the planet is burning.
How much more of our individual time, energy, and money are we going to let them waste tricking us into worrying about whether this or that can be recycled? It's pissing in the wind.
Meanwhile, here, the peoples' carefully sorted bins of waste, cardboard, plastics and compost are all dumped into the same bin by the collection truck, and taken to the landfill, and what little real recycling we did have was long ago gutted by a corrupt corporate-captured government. 😡
It's all theatrics and diversion to keep their profit machine running for as long as possible.
@malcircuit And those same companies who like to talk about how eco-friendly they are (Apple, Microsoft) are the very ones who make devices or restricted operating systems that force you buy new ones every few years or ditch your perfectly fine but older computer (filling up all our landfill space) to meet some phony TPM requirement. And all of that is done for one solitary reason, profit. When it comes to their $, they want you to pollute (so long as you buy more of their products, of course).
@WillA763 Yeeeeup, exactly. I have phones from 5 years ago that I would probably still be using, but they stopped getting software updates, and the battery is long dead and was impossible to replace.
I shudder to think about how much natural resources, carbon, sweat, and blood goes into making these devices that we replace every few years because we aren't given much of an alternative. Because the line must always go up 📈
@malcircuit Me too. I refuse to trash them & contribute to e-waste, so I give them away to fellow techies who need spare parts. Computers are easier to cannibalize for parts & donate. Phones, though, are much harder, but I've dedicated not to ditch them, esp. the batteries, which I get around by doing a periodic donation to Call2Recycle. Sad thing is, you have to seek out to do these things, which should just be SOP, & these devices are built in such a way that they should last at least 10 yrs.
@malcircuit you're actually supposed to compost the pizza box because if the grease... but shaking of my pedantry, I agree wholeheartedly with your post
@malcircuit anyone selling individual action as a solution to systemic problems has a vested interest in not meaningfully challenging the systemic problems
@malcircuit Lets be really really clear: the planet is burning because people drive cars and heat their homes. And the solutions to those things are NOT simple or easy.
@anne_twain@malcircuit Yeah, pretty much that. Transportation, Residential, and Electric generation (not all of which is home heating, admittedly) make up more than half of CO2 emissions. Go look it up yourself since you surely won't believe me. It IS literally the things the individual consumer does, or are done to supply us, but it's not very amenable to change is the actual point.
@whknott@malcircuit I do agree with you. That's not what your previous post said though.
I absolutely agree that it's what we humans consume in the way of goods and services that generates high levels of carbon. This will go on as long as we're willing to buy what they're selling.
@anne_twain@malcircuit And the biggest part of what we buy that's problematic is cars and home heating oil. Also concrete and shipping in general. That's all I was saying. Well, that and that just switching to electric cars and electric heat and electric everything else isn't going to stop the emissions.
What we buy is determined by what's being sold. I can't buy something that isn't being offered. For example, I would prefer not to own a car, but for most areas in the US it's practically impossible to live without one (I've tried). Most people can't choose to go without cars, heating oil, concrete infrastructure, products made overseas, etc. All of those are the default because someone profits from it
Talking about what we're "willing to buy" is missing the point
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