if we reduced wealth inequality to the point noone could afford that kind of shit i bet we could ride the plastic straw wave for a few centuries before it really came back to bite us.
We need the international court to set hard caps that will result in prison time.
International? We need the Intergalactic Court!
Always remember that coke and pepsi do not use recycled plastic in their coke or pepsi packaging, yet they are outwardly huge proponents of recycling the waste they create
Me switching to European cans of cola :3
Oh totally. billionaires carbon footprint is many orders of magnitude larger than multiple lifetimes and generations of us normies. Abolish billionaires. Redistribute that wealth. The environmental future we want - NOW.
Eco-friendly straws don’t have to be mushy paper.
There are several other “vegetable plastics” that last long enough to serve as a fully functional straw, but months later degrade naturally. The reason you don’t see them being used is because McDonald’s doesn’t want to spend an extra $0.10 on every order, because that would totally bankrupt the billionaire company you know.
I still propose that we just stop with the single use straws and if people want straws for their drinks that badly they can bring their own reusable one, and if it isn’t takeout the restaurant can provide a reusable one.
Like seriously why does everything need a straw?
There is a hollow grass based solution used in asia which requires zero processing beyond cutting, drying and packaging. But I’ll keep the paper straws if the billionaires have to travel in paper planes and boats.
I carry metal straws for this reason. I also bring my own cup, and most places I visit let me use both.
Flex!
I visited a Chinese monastery in 2018 and spent 4 months learning the discipline and art of tipfu -the study of tipping a cup at the right angle to sip liquid without the use of a straw. I’m currently yellow belt.
Flex!!
Man, I’m lucky if I remember to bring my bags to the grocery store…
They tricked us into taking all the blame for climate change, so we’re busting our ass off to reduce and they don’t even pretend to care. In truth we could do more for the environment with guillotines than paper straws
They tricked us into taking all the blame for climate change
They tricked us into believing metric fucktons of single use plastics would keep us safe and healthy.
But we never had any direct control over climate policy, because we never had any direct control over the capital itself.
All we could do was blame ourselves.
Did they?
I can’t recall anyone ever being anything but nonplussed and skeptical about paper straws. From what I can tell, it was a product of a think tank that pushed into the news, which then caused businesses to treat that as though it were public demand and pushed it out to everyone, and most people shrugged, used the obviously inferior product (because it was free and the alternatives require attention), and then people got on with their day.
On the wider scale this was pitched as ‘the only thing you can personally do to combat climate change’ - but I suspect it is the literal strawman of a figurative progressive position, purposely pushing a manufactured defective solution as a means to distract and suppress more substantive change and organization thereof.
paper straws were about trash, not C02.
they used to make them with a wax coating so they would not get mushy.
I’m so confused but you guys, how is reducing the amount of single use plastics in the environment a bad thing?
Individuals opting out of use doesn’t shape production or wholesale, because they’re so damned cheap to produce and the expense to dispose of them is on the public side.
Single use plastics are a classic case of Negative Externality. You can only curb them with public policies and bulk production level decisions.
The notion that “I’m doing my part” by not partaking in the fountain of free-at-point-of-service goods is predicated on an engineered misunderstanding of the plastics supply chain.
That’s why the billionaires have decided to hoard all the wealth among a smaller and smaller proportion of the population. They’re trying to save the planet! When 10 people have everything and the rest are all dead - boom, planet saved.
But who will clean the cruise ship jets for them?!
Robots, probably. ChatGPT will figure it out, probably.
Look, if living in a densified treeless hellscape of concrete towers that all look the same, filled with 350 sq. ft. windowless suites furnished with sawdust furniture, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for the ruling class to continue living well.
This fat cat gets 350 sq ft!!
Oh no. The Fats will be rounded up and rendered for cruise ship airplane fuel.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
throws a Molotov at the next flying cruiser
BORTLES!
Bruh if you so much as spit on said cruiser you’ll be wanted by the police for terrorism, despite the definition of terrorism being to threaten harm to civilians…
Before I submit, I want to clarify that I have read the UK Government’s definition of terrorism, and as it’s a stupid ass definition, I elected to ignore it.
“…as the use or threat of… …serious damage to property… …designed to influence the government… …for the purpose of advancing [an]… …ideological cause.”
As we know, damaging property belonging to anyone else, regardless of how many people will be saved, is against the legal law and punishable. HOWEVER, going back to their own law…
“…as the use or threat of… …serious violence against a person [OR] endangering a person’s life (other than that of the person committing the action) [OR] creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public… …which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism regardless of whether or not the action is designed to… …intimidate the public… …for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause… …Action includes action outside the United Kingdom.”
By their own law, any organisation intending to assist in the wilful and unprovoked violence against people, with explosives or firearms, is by their definition a terrorist. This defines the UK government and many companies as terrorists, coconspirators of Israel.
The disclaimer “other than that of the person committing the action” absolves anyone of the definition if they are doing so to stop the attacker. This defines Palestine Action as innocent as they were acting to stop the attacking arms company.But the only reason these interpretations are not the case in reality is because the government a) choose which laws to uphold and when, and b) defend their decision by lying that the Palestinian people were the instigators of their own eradication by the various countries of the world.
Sorry, I know this is just a meme
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The billionaires aren’t the ones teaching you about how the planet works. In fact how rich as person is has nothing to do with it.
If you want to understand how the planet works, learn it from planet experts.
But they got those cruise ship private jets and that’s bad
I guess they didn’t see the photo
Ok I’m genuinely curious, what are you talking about? Where did you get “teaching how the planet works?”
While this scum is allowed allocate all of the world’s resources; every drop of water you conserve goes to their data centers and pleasure fleets.
There is no conservation until they’re gone. It simply cannot be done.
Companies 3 years ago: helping the environment is part of our core values
The same companies one day later: start to heavily use and train AI
helping the environment is part of our core values
By the way, back to commuting to/from the office, people!
you are being generous. They are more like
“Under enlightened Trump’s benevolent leadership we have realized that environmental concerns, inclusivity, modern medicine and preventing political misinformation are all woke scams. Therefore effective immediately we are ditching all our efforts in these directions.”
That was always just green washing bullshit.
Amazon bought an entire arena and named it “climate pledge arena”. You can’t make this shit up
I mean yes, but it’s not like they use an extra drop for every drop conserved, it’s still okay to not be wasteful.
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Fuck that and you for suggesting it
So unnecessary. Rule 1.
why is your local council providing 2 bins but sending everything to the one place?
when you bought it up what did they say?
Recycling centers try and then often give up and just landfill plastic. And then you’re dealing with the extra transportation to have it make a stop at the recycling plant on the way to the landfill.
There is a lot of “shift the blame off corporations to the consumer and act like they can do something” happening when in reality the consumer can’t do much, and what we can do isnt 100% effective anyway.
That’s funny because over here in Australia it looks to be progressing well?
For us it’s a yellow bin for recycling
Visy – what happens to your household recycling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXSmINKUOxg
Most Australian states have a 10c refund when you return a can or bottle:
Do you have this?
You can even then directly donate it to a charity of your choice: https://www.containersforchange.com.au/qld/donate-your-refund
On top of this if you use https://oceanhero.today/ for searching the money they make from ads goes towards paying people in poor countries to collect plastic
Australia wide we’re slowly phasing out single use plastics:
https://www.marineconservation.org.au/which-australian-states-are-banning-single-use-plastics/
That’s already reducing the amount of plastic by millions of tons
There’s also smaller things like:
Our new cards are made from 100% recycled plastic*, with 64% collected from coastal communities by Parley for the Oceans™.
https://www.bankaust.com.au/card
Recycling centers try and then often give up and just landfill plastic
Sounds like defeatist mentality to me, your councils/states should be doing better
Bread tags? What do they do instead? The only choices Ive seen are a stupid plastic tile or a wire, and I can’t imagine single use wire is better than a stupid single use plastic tile
cardboard :D
https://playandgo.com.au/australias-first-100-recycled-recyclable-cardboard-bread-tags-tip-top/
The new bread tags will launch on South Australian shelves first, removing 11 million plastic bread tags from South Australian waste streams by the end of 2021 and divert over 400 million plastic bread tags from landfill each year as they roll out nationally. By 2025, all Tip Top’s packaging will be 100 per cent recyclable, reusable or compostable to help close-the-loop
afaik they’re all cardboard now even other brands, I don’t think I’ve seen a plastic one in a while
Canada’s west coast is the same. Despite some reports implying the contrary, properly sorted flexible plastic waste does get diverted away from landfills and oceans and remade into product, in BC. And we also have bottle and can deposits, like most Canadian provinces (called consigne/consignment in Québec).
Apparently bottle deposits are only a thing in 10 of 50 US states.
It’s more than just plastic. In most places most things are not recycled. More accurate to say: in vanishingly few places is even a single kind of thing recycled. Then every scrap we save goes not to sustainability, but golf courses pleasure yachts and data centers to sloppify the world.
So saving is not conservation. You literally cannot make a positive impact environmentally unless you’re good at violence.
That’s needlessly pessimistic, but I’ll believe general consumer recycling programs are not very effective.
- I know my composting program does something because I can give them food waste and get back compost
- I know can recycling works because there is an entire industry supporting it, plus aluminum is energy intensive and I’ve repeatedly read it is the most recycled material
- I know electronics recycling works because it’s expensive
- I believe industrial recycling works because they have bulk quantities of pure material and there’s generally profit somewhere.
Most of all I believe my city’s consumer recycling is fairly effective because of the number of things they have specific steps/actions/destinations for. More importantly we don’t have a landfill and the one we use is very expensive, so there’s a profit motive for minimizing what we dispose of
I’m not saying it can’t work or we lack the technology.
I’m saying it doesnt because its cheaper to just toss it all in the dump.
While this scum is allowed allocate all of the world’s resources; every drop of water you conserve goes to their data centers and pleasure fleets.
Does it? If everyone in America reduced the amount of water they used would data centres and yachts use it all up? Do you believe this?
Yes, because the price of water would drop due to lower demand from the public, and so they could steal even more for data centers.
Yes. Oh my god they have said they want this. They didn’t have to say, but they have.
He didn’t mean water literally (yet, as we are running out of non-salt water…)
But we have (and likely will) if it were to come to rationing their pools would be prioritized our bath or even drinking water
They waste so much more on data centers. They literally send used water to sewer; cheaper than cooling it for recirculation. This is standard.
He didn’t mean water literally
It’s still nonsensical, this idea that any savings at all are pointless particularly when you’re talking about small impact spread across 350 million americans and 400 million europeans, it adds up to far more than any data centre could ever hope
Take solar panels for example and the impact they have had:
We’re now emitting 5-8 million LESS tons of co2 per month and regularly have oversupply because there’s too much renewables in the grid:
We now have a booming battery rebate because we need far more storage than solar:
Since the launch of the Cheaper Home Batteries Program on July 1, roughly 161MW of home battery power has been added to the grid per month. At the current pace, the amount added in about 18 months will match the output of Eraring power station – Australia’s biggest coal-fired power plant
https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/battery-rebate-to-deliver-a-coal-plant-of-power-in-18-months/
This is just from regular people like you or I making a small contribution that benefits themselves and the environment
Same with mushy straws but tbh we don’t even really do that anymore do you guys not have something like
The Planet Straw eco-friendly, Biodegradable, Compostable, and Recyclable, Planet-based PHA straws
They’re basically a drop in for plastic straws you wouldn’t know the difference
And still globally the fraction of renewables in electricity gen, and even primary energy consumption (counting renewable elec gen as “primary”), remains pretty steadfast at the levels of the 1990s. The basic reason is that they’re subsidising electricity, making it cheaper and people ( and I count both final consumers and intermediate producers as “people”) are using more of it. The only meaningful hiatuses in the growth of demand was the major recessions in 2008 and 2020, but consumption largely bounced back after those.
Savings are not totally pointless, but reducing prices of something does tend to increase consumption, and erode a notable amount (but granted probably not all) of savings. The earth’s human economy is largely set up to extract and use resources, give it more resources and it grows and extracts and uses more. We’re not going to let large amounts of cheap (or subsidised) resources sit there and go unexploited.
Adding new generation capacity has some similarity to adding a new lane to a busy highway. Induced demand.
From a Europe/EEC point of view It has been major restriction on coal generation (LCPD, IED, and to a minimal extent the EU-ETS) - that has reduced coal use in generation. Renewables doesn’t directly drive out fossil fuel gen , I think it has to be regulated out. Same will be with transport, if you don’t ban petrol, and just subsidise electric transport, there’ll be more trips you wont reduce petrol consumption. And even if you could ban petrol in cars, someone somewhere will start finding a way to use all that cheap fuel for something. The only saving grace for transport is that electric mass transit is way more efficient , than personal transport, and at least China knows what its doing on that front. But I’d be very worried for the planet as more and more people in India continue to start getting cars - I think they’ll easily become a market for any petrol saved by EVs elsewhere…
And still globally the fraction of renewables in electricity gen, and even primary energy consumption (counting renewable elec gen as “primary”), remains pretty steadfast at the levels of the 1990s
I think this might be out of date info, renewables (thanks mainly to china tbh) are now the cheapest form of power and surging with installations:
World surpasses 40% clean power as renewables see record rise
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2025/#executive-summary
Savings are not totally pointless, but reducing prices of something does tend to increase consumption
Good old Jevons
Adding new generation capacity has some similarity to adding a new lane to a busy highway. Induced demand.
I don’t agree with this, yes there is an increase in energy usage, I am technically using more electricity than ever from thanks to cheap solar because I fill up my car with 40kw worth of electricity every few weeks, but at the same time I now use 0L of petrol and no gas at all so it’s not exactly adding a lane to the highway if I’ve reduced my energy use elsewhere and added it on to renewables, it’s the same number of lanes but now I’m 100% renewable
We also have visible signs it’s eating into fossil fuels:
Closure of Spain’s biggest coal plant makes way for massive wind power development
UK to finish with coal power after 142 years
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y35qz73n8o
The Australian Energy Market Operator is predicting that the country’s remaining coal fired generators are likely to close much quicker than expected, saying they are becoming less reliable, more difficult to maintain and less able to compete with the growing share of renewables.
AEMO’s draft 2024 Integrated System Plan, the latest version of its 30-year planning blueprint, suggests coal fired generation will be gone from Queensland and Victoria within a decade – by 2033/34 – and that the last coal unit will close in NSW by 2038.
Same will be with transport, if you don’t ban petrol, and just subsidise electric transport, there’ll be more trips you wont reduce petrol consumption
This doesn’t make sense to me, if you were talking about cheaper petrol then sure, but if I replace my petrol car with an EV, even if I do more trips it’s still electricity, petrol usage has dropped to 0 despite an increase in trips
And we’re still in the very early years with EV’s, we have only just started pushing out electric trucks and buses, speaking of: Brisbane just got our first electric buses earlier in the year!
Onboard the new Brisbane Metro (now with added Chilli)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oWDE4zh2FA
They are so quiet it’s crazy!
tldr: I think your premise is that electricity usage is increasing and renewables are supplying it but not eating into fossil fuels and I don’t think this is true, the last few years solar, EV and battery innovation has been leaps and bounds
As an example I bought this in Jan 2023 for 14k: https://sonnen.com.au/sonnenbatterie-evo/
10kw
Today for 5.5k I can get 40kw:
OK, I’ll wait til the 2024 and 2025 data are out and see the radical change - but the past 30 years pretty much support my “outdated” view. I don’t accept that you putting no petrol in your car means petrol consumption is lower - someone else can (and almost certainly will) still use it somewhere somehow in some vehicle or other. Unless you’re still buying it and burying in the ground somewhere no one can find it.
In short - top line goes up faster than the renewables wedge grows —> global warming increases. In fact the fossil fuel wedges also grow as much or more than renewables. Maybe this will become more than a blip - maybe. But realistically I look at the graph above and 2008, 2020 are the things that stand out as a lesson.
People need fewer datacentres not more, wherever they’re located. I think people just need to take a long hard look at themselves and see whether they can survive by jerking off to 360p or 720p porn - it is just about exactly as hollow and unfulfilling as jerking off to 4K AI generated porn.
I wouldn’t use datacenters if I could get a static ip address, or even just ipv6, but those are more expensive than just renting a vm in a far away place
it is just about exactly as hollow and unfulfilling as jerking off to 4K AI generated porn.
gasp I can’t believe you said that in front of my 4k ai girlfriend!
top line goes up faster than the renewables wedge grows —> global warming
Yeah but there’s two parts here, one is that it’s not us or the data centres:
In contrast, India recorded the highest absolute increase in emissions, adding 164.8 Mt CO2eq compared to 2023, a 3.9% rise. Indonesia saw the most significant relative increase at 5%, followed by Russia (+2.4%) and China (+0.8%). The US and Brazil had relatively stable emissions with minor increases.
India adding 164 million tons of co2 more than it did the year before, that’s a shitload of data centres
The EU and US and Australia/NZ/UK all have emissions trending down, we’re playing our part, this place beats itself up a lot when if the rest of the world was like us we’d be well on our way down
Non-comparable! In say California there is severe water restrictions even limits shower lengths at times yet pools can still be filled… If the rich weren’t allowed to take up inorbitant amounts of resources say for bezos private airspace tourism or megajacts then there would be a lot more left to us…
But lets talk about personal impact too! Imagine if instead of leaving it to up you to maybe change something the country made the investment? Like it could from the subsidies provided for the solar panels in most countries ( know for a fact thats the case in the us, Germany and Hungary)! And then then the change wouldn’t be a few percentage points, it would actually be considerable!
No
The Houston Advanced Research Center, an independent nonprofit research organization focusing on sustainability solutions, estimates that existing data centers in Texas will consume approximately 25 billion gallons of water, or 0.4% of the state’s total water use in 2025.
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/25/texas-data-center-water-use/
Metal straws are nice
I love my metal straws. Great for smoothies and milkshakes. They don’t collapse!
Wheat stalk straws are surprisingly good. Don’t need to wash them like metal and silicone ones.
Just don’t trip
Yeah, but I’m terrible about carrying them with me
Start a cocaine or ketamine habit and you will always remember to have it on hand.
Do they have to be 3 feet long novelty straws?
Metal straws are annoying to clean. You can’t just put them in the dishwasher, but have to use more water washing by hand and need to buy a specific tool just for that.
But why are we using straws at all? Just say no
some people’s necks don’t bend right. straws are a medical device
That’s where you’re going? Out of the billions of straws used every day, you’re concerned about the edge case where it’s medically useful? By all means go for the plastic single use. Medicine is a huge user of that and there’s no realistic alternative. Hospitals and nursing homes get universal exemptions. It’s also a tiny fraction of single use plastic straw waste.
can i interrupt your whine to remind you i answered your question
Thank you for interrupting our discussion of zebras where everything is striped black or white, by reminding us they’re striped light gray and dark gray
you wanted to know why people use them and “PFFF THATS AN EDGE CASE” do you feel this way about all disadvantaged groups or just the disabled?
it’s literally the edge case, and insignificant to the actual point being made. you excused like a few thousand uses of the straw, maybe. don’t excuse the thousands of metric tons thrown out every year
Might get expensive to give one away with every drink
Yeah the last time I drank a can of coke it was crazy expensive. Like an entire dollar or some shit.
I was thinking those proper metal ones, but if we’re talking about some extremely thin aluminium straws then I’d more worry about how well they’d handle and if there’s some other worries about them. Lots of metal trash probably
Those ships are powered by baby chickens.
First they load up the tanks full of baby chickens. The chicks travel into a conveyor belt where a long row of old women pick up the chicks to if they are male or female. The females are grown to make more eggs. The males are tossed into the intake. The males are then mixed with air and tar and then injected into the piston at high pressure. Once top dead center is reached, a spark drivers the pressures to hundreds of PSI and as much as 800 C. The chicks have been known to survive up to that moment.
If they can perfect chick injection they will try more compact fuels like puppies, crocks, whales, baby elephants, the homeless and or orphans. They might end up stuck with birds so they might try just eagles. There are enough of each eagle to push the boats a good two or three miles!
you must have some really good weed
We are jealous.
Thanks but it’s my natural state. I can’t share.
Someone has just watched Baraka. Good choice of movie my friend!
I’m curious as to why you’re using a straw at all.
is it that because you’re at a restaurant?
You should know that by giving most restaurants your patronage, you are contributing to a lifestyle that we all cannot participate in.
What does this even mean?
It means that anyone who does anything totally sucks.
