Help the planet - OK, but how much? The public discourse would benefit from having some scale of savings/damage for all news like that. Think the lovely and simple color squares showing radiation (banana, natural, flight, atomic bomb, etc.).
I don't think we as humanity have adopted a reasonable approach towards "helping the planet". I know it could be hard, but how about listing top N polluters and addressing these? Or top N factors where the biggest possible gain is and addressing these?
Instead I am preached on plastic straws and laundry detergent.
Every day we see some new article about how much of a complete piece of shit westerners are and if they just sacrifice this one luxury we will save the sea turtles.
I don't want to hear a thing until the largest polluters are reprimanded by world government first (india, SEA, africa). I have never thrown a piece of trash onto the ground let alone into a body of water to end up in a turtles stomach.
yeah you're on to something. What I would want as first and reasonable step is to talk about absolute numbers of CO2 per person(/state/company/whatever). Only then talking about reducing (e.g. in percentages) does make sense. Instead we have all the campaigns about this or that that don't really adress the general issue that it's all about _absolute_ counts of e.g. CO2 (or in this case microplastic).
But I want to give the article some slack: They basically said that in the UK the number of wash loads increased by nearly 10% without any positive effect (my interpretation); thus we may reduce our amount of wash loads by at least as much again. Also helps with the bills.
Even if people gave up laundry and bathing entirely, we wouldn't put a dent in overall water consumption compared to industrial uses like chip production or fracking.
It's always popular to blame the end user when corporations have terribly wasteful production processes and no accountability.
Is water use during chip production on the same magnitude as fracking? Genuinely curious as I didn’t even know it was at a level that was considered wasteful
If you're curious, chip production has quite the supply chain:
In brief: https://bbnc.bens.org/semiconductors---page-3-key-inputs
In detail: https://www.interface-eu.org/publications/chip-productions-e...
The annual flow of just the REE used in doping is here: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S01691368230014...
and REE processing from mined concentrates to usable additives alone creates a few damfuls of low level readioactive waste in Malaysia that's a bit of an issue.
it's always popular to blame the corporations when the end users fund these corporations
Okay, but I want to have clean clothes. I like to have clean bedsheets. I shower not because I "need" to, but because I prefer to smell and feel comfortable.
People aren't ants to be corralled.
It depends on physical activity. For people working sedentary jobs, washing clothes after one day is probably not needed. For myself, I find I can wear clothes two days without issue. In the same vein, I like to shower every two days. Of course if I smell myself in the evening I will take a shower regardless of the when I last showered.
The fascinating thing about showering is that there are quite a lot of ways to reduce your consumption of heating or water. E.g.:
- shower less often (e.g. to have one day every 10 days without showering means saving 10%!)
- shower with cold(er) water
- shower a minute or two shorter (also please stop showering in the middle for the soap)
- use a different sprinkler head that uses less water or don't crank up the tap as much
well, at least I find it fascinating...
seriously, how do you smell yourself? People who have BO don't even know they have it until somebody tells them.
Odor fatigue (aka olfactory fatigue) is the primary reason people don't smell themselves. Generally most people, if they take the time to take a deep sniff of their arm pits, they'll know. Another method is to smell your clothes after you remove them. Asking a partner or trusted friend is also a simple method. Palate cleansing is another method.
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Sounds super legit. Were you also a member of the team behind the online breast examinations during lockdown?
How did you know?
Feminism is an endless struggle.
