A throw away society and why I'm scared for the future of our planet.

Jez6345789

I am not the worlds biggest tree hugger but the last 25 in my mind has seen a massive number of new approaches to business and culture that will be looked back on by the historians as the crazy years. Things like fast fashion Apple selling 15 million iPhones month on month Massively over sweetened over packaged ready meals. No government is going to legislate against modern consumerism as these days we have wholly developed and an embraced a flawed financial system of massive consumerism and consumption. The this years model approach is fostered to fuel the idiot idea that without growth we are embracing the demon of recession and no government or person will vote for that.

Sambostar

A Men to that and a new economy based on quality if life not unsustainable financial GDP growth and borrowing.

Won't happen though.

TheBlueWolf

Emp_Fab;1045426" said:

TheBlueWolf said:

lloyd said:There is nothing you can do as an individual that will make much difference, this comes down to the whole world coming together and sorting it at a higher level.



Doing your bit is important of course as it will normalise it...eventually, but for every person over here turning lights off and reusing plastic bags, there's 50 more throwing everything in the bin.






This.....



As individuals we should all do our bit but it relies on everyone else doing the same










However.... the near-guaranteed response you get when pointing this out to people is "Yeah, but what difference is it going to make if I recycle, when everyone else isn't / China is building coal-powered power stations by the million / etc ?".  This is either deliberately obtuse in an attempt to justify their own laziness or real stupidity.

I suspect it's a bit of both Emp

DrJazzTap

I personally think it has to do with people not caring to an extent.
They feel the problem is something that won't directly affect them in their lifetime. So why care? Some of it is a lack of education. And some of it is people being selfish bastards. "Not gonna be in my lifetime etc"

People are also lazy. I was having a conversation about Bristol potentially having a congestion charge scheme, at work. My dimwitted co-worker said "my friend would have to walk from Clifton to Bristol"
That's literally a twenty to thirty minute walk. I said "why can't she do that anyway??". The amount of people who are amazed that I can cycle forty minutes into work is frightening.

Skipped

We need a diktat to stop Dicks buying Tat.

Sambostar

Apparently 25% of us throw our shit out of the car.

Moe_Zambeek

thebreeze;1044707" said:

It's about individuals and about sorting it out at a political level.  They both go hand in hand.  There has to be a paradigm shift in how we do things but in such a way that people can go with it.

I've sited this company in a couple of threads before but I'll do so again because they are such a great example.  http://riversimple.com

There is no obsolescence (or very little) built into the business model - unlike all the conventional car manufacturers who's whole business model is built around obsolescence and getting people to upgrade every 3 years etc.  There's no ownership of the product, the cars run on hydrogen, they do all the maintenance, keeping it going for decades etc before it needs replacing, all the parts are made fully recyclable etc.  The key thing though is that it's not just about the car being more energy efficient but it's about every aspect of that business being run along the lines of trying to have a sustainable future in every way.  They have managed to find a business model which works but doesn't just depend on producing endless units of product that will get thrown away or worse has to be thrown away so that you can get people to buy more.

The more that individuals turn to these kinds of ways of going about things the more politicians will have take notice.

It's not the changes in technology that will get us out of the mess but changes in our thinking and how we use our technology.

Interesting stuff but ultimately they don't have a business yet, really, they're still crowdfunding to get to customer beta testing. I wish them well but we can't say it works until they've proved it over time. Sustainability over decades sounds great but when the company goes bust after 5 years your sustainability is gone too.

Chalky

Moe_Zambeek;1047703" said:

[quote="thebreeze;1044707"]It's about individuals and about sorting it out at a political level.  They both go hand in hand.  There has to be a paradigm shift in how we do things but in such a way that people can go with it.

I've sited this company in a couple of threads before but I'll do so again because they are such a great example.  http://riversimple.com

There is no obsolescence (or very little) built into the business model - unlike all the conventional car manufacturers who's whole business model is built around obsolescence and getting people to upgrade every 3 years etc.  There's no ownership of the product, the cars run on hydrogen, they do all the maintenance, keeping it going for decades etc before it needs replacing, all the parts are made fully recyclable etc.  The key thing though is that it's not just about the car being more energy efficient but it's about every aspect of that business being run along the lines of trying to have a sustainable future in every way.  They have managed to find a business model which works but doesn't just depend on producing endless units of product that will get thrown away or worse has to be thrown away so that you can get people to buy more.

The more that individuals turn to these kinds of ways of going about things the more politicians will have take notice.

It's not the changes in technology that will get us out of the mess but changes in our thinking and how we use our technology.

Interesting stuff but ultimately they don't have a business yet, really, they're still crowdfunding to get to customer beta testing. I wish them well but we can't say it works until they've proved it over time. Sustainability over decades sounds great but when the company goes bust after 5 years your sustainability is gone too.


[/quote]

My problem with this type of aspiration is that while its objective is laudable, its business model probably isn't. It has to break the long track record of "why people buy a particular car".

In the 70s it was a popular idea that in the 2000s, everyone would drive the same optimised, cheap, functional and identical vehicle while wearing optimised, cheap, functional and identical clothing, and living in optimised, cheap, functional and identical apartments. In other words, the future was rational, functional and efficient.

Of course what happened is the opposite - a celebration of diversity, individualism, subgenre, and disentanglement from the social chains of living. People buy a particular car as much because of what it says about them, over its function or efficiency.

ICBM

So there you go… for all the nay-sayers who complained about the carrier bag charge and said it wouldn't achieve anything:

An 85% reduction in use.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36917174

Chalky

ICBM said:

So there you go… for all the nay-sayers who complained about the carrier bag charge and said it wouldn't achieve anything:

An 85% reduction in use.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36917174

My first thought when I read that as the day's headline was "Boy is it a slow news day!" 

Heartfeltdawn

Chalky said:

In the 70s it was a popular idea that in the 2000s, everyone would drive the same optimised, cheap, functional and identical vehicle while wearing optimised, cheap, functional and identical clothing, and living in optimised, cheap, functional and identical apartments. In other words, the future was rational, functional and efficient.

Of course what happened is the opposite - a celebration of diversity, individualism, subgenre, and disentanglement from the social chains of living. People buy a particular car as much because of what it says about them, over its function or efficiency.

The interesting thing is that the second paragraph could quite apply to politics. People choose politics because of what it says about them. Capitalism taps into that individualistic celebration. It puzzles me why those who praise capitalism will bitch about Generation Snowflake because capitalism is an essential component of those snowflakes. 

Sambostar

I'd vote green if they had some decent sustainable policies and weren't all men haters who have made it a manifesto pledge to free all women from jail.  Even the runner up for the Tories said that all men are paedophiles.  This is unfortunately the state of play with politics.

menamestom

ICBM said:

So there you go… for all the nay-sayers who complained about the carrier bag charge and said it wouldn't achieve anything:

An 85% reduction in use.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36917174

It's a good story.  The next step, charge 50p for coffee cups, so everybody carries around their own reusable cup.  And ban daft practices like places giving out plastic cutlery for people that are eating in.

ICBM

menamestom said:

It's a good story.  The next step, charge 50p for coffee cups, so everybody carries around their own reusable cup.  And ban daft practices like places giving out plastic cutlery for people that are eating in.

What I find impressive is how small an incentive - basically the smallest-value coin most people will even bother to pick up off the street now - is enough to drastically change behaviour like that… while not being punitive to anyone who genuinely does need a bag.

After seeing the piece on why "recyclable" coffee cups aren't, I agree that something needs to be done about that as well. There's too much acceptance that waste is inevitable, when really it's that people (and companies, in that case) can't be bothered to change their behaviour until it starts to prick them in the pocket, in however minor a way.