"Simplicity is almost always a lie" is the most frustratingly true statement.

@sara-ww8eq

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, there was a vlogbrothets video years ago where John said "the truth resists simplicity"

@DuranmanX

2 жыл бұрын

Or as Hank stated once, "nothing is simple, even this statement"

@theocaratic

2 жыл бұрын

"all simplicity is a lie" is a quote from one of their videos, and i even have a cool graphic design image that someone made of it, so it's really interesting to hear him specifically Revising it. I guess "All simplicity is a lie" was too simple, and thus a lie. wait...

@ToyKeeper

2 жыл бұрын

So true. If something looks simple, that's a huge red flag indicating that it's probably not accurate.

@AlanStucky

2 жыл бұрын

This.

Nothing like a good robust waste management system

@Matt_Rowan

2 жыл бұрын

What I call my bowels.

@yarnyness5431

2 жыл бұрын

+

@lijohnyoutube101

2 жыл бұрын

Yes but this is partly a lie as well. We say oh those 3rd world countries pollute and get all their stuff in the water but until very very recently a very huge portion of US recycling went to those countries they bought it from us but didn’t have good means to handle. Its like the ultimate passing the buck!

@lonestarr1490

2 жыл бұрын

@@lijohnyoutube101 Exactly what I was going to say. Simplicity is almost always a lie. And saying, 'we have recycling, we can't be at fault' is a pretty simplistic thing.

@kuroexmachina

2 жыл бұрын

you mean exporting it to china and other asian countries?

I wish more people saw reduce, reuse, recycle as an ordered list. The best way to do anything for the environment is to reduce consumption.

@karatraffas6107

2 жыл бұрын

+

@ThatOneIrishFurry

2 жыл бұрын

Do people not see it as an ordered list? I don't know any other way why the slogan would be constructed like that

@eustatic3832

2 жыл бұрын

But that is communist or something

@SofosProject

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThatOneIrishFurry I think that recycling has just been made so easy that people forget the other two. Companies sell food in plastics meant to be disposed of after use, so reuse is difficult. Also, we kind of rely on the materials they use in packaging, so unless you're willing to cut out products that use plastic packaging, reduction is also difficult. Recycling, though? Just put it in a special bin and you can forget about it**!

@rachelfountain1052

2 жыл бұрын

@@raixbd Same, I actually don't feel guilty using plastic grocery shopping bags anymore because they double as garbage bags for when I clean the litter box. It does suck when they have holes in the bottom though--those really are useless lol

If I’m being honest, I was super bummed when I saw your scishow video. For about a week I was like “god dammit, I thought I was doing good and it’s just another example of the reality being worse for the environment.” But after sitting with the information and processing it (totally offline, I should add, so the public pressure wasn’t on) I’ve come to a place (like always!) of feeling empowered by information! Now I’m like “this is funny! I’m gonna have the random tote bags I have now til I die! I wonder how long they’ll last! I definitely won’t make cotton tote bags as merch ever! Wow! I’m glad I’m on a better path!” So thanks for the truth, even if it made me feel shaken for a bit, because the planet is worth me being humbled.

@pattheplanter

2 жыл бұрын

I wish you a long enough life that your tote bags become the ecological option.

@nvwest

2 жыл бұрын

“The planet is worth me being humbled” is beautifully said

@morganthem

2 жыл бұрын

Directly from teh study: "The absolute highest number of reuse times for the climate change impact category was obtained for composite and cotton carrier bags. In particular, conventional cotton carrier bags should be reused at least 50 times before being disposed of; organic cotton carrier bags should be reused 150 times based on their environmental production cost. This calculated number of primary reuse times for cotton bags complies with results of previous studies. For example, Edwards and Fry (2011) calculated a number of around 130 reuse times required for cotton carrier bags to provide similar climate change impacts in comparison to HDPE carrier bags, which were chosen as reference in that study." Soooo I'm not 100% sure where the bajillion years to offset is coming from.

@zacrintoul

2 жыл бұрын

You make cotton tote bags? You could always source your cotton from items that would be thrown away. Used pants and shirts old canvas boat covers etc.

@katerowe3202

2 жыл бұрын

Well said.

kind of feel like some of the people who reacted really defensively to the tote bag thing are just very tired of being told that yet another thing they did in good faith was ~bad~ and now there’s another thing to worry about in a world that now expects you to care about and be mad about everything. and when every other thing we are forced to worry about is delivered in the tone of “if you do this thing you’re part of the problem” that can make a person knee-jerk react defensively if it was something they were doing to try to do good. i would rather know than not know but can see why some people would not if you’re made to feel even more powerless than before.

@picnicsandstars

2 жыл бұрын

+

@meghanquinn6383

2 жыл бұрын

+

@sammyrick1078

2 жыл бұрын

This comment perfectly captures the feeling addressed in the video, doesn't it? Being a person who wants to be a 'good person' is hard! And it turns out, hard things are HARD! Sometimes we are given imperfect information. Sometimes we are misled. Sometimes we do a thing to be 'good people' and later find out it was a bad thing to do. Being good is hard, which means it's complicated. But it's hard. Love this comment!

@caitie226

2 жыл бұрын

yeah, people like to feel they are making a difference in something they care about, so it’s hard to be told that solutions you had embraced are just more problems in disguise. where next? how do you backtrack your learning and move past your guilt? it becomes easier to challenge information you don’t want to hear or wish you’d kept on in ignorance.

@weaverofbrokenthreads

2 жыл бұрын

You said that so well! Like, I know that knowing things is good and on a good day I have zero problem with that. But if I get one "You're the problem" takes too many on a bad day, I always end on the really unhealthy conclusion of "I get it, the planet would be better off without me, what am I supposed to do about it? Should we all just die?" which is unproductive and dangerous

I think the aesthetics and “vibes” of eco-friendliness are so much easier for people to grasp than that fact about plastic in the ocean mostly being a result of fishing equipment and a lack of waste management infrastructure. And it’s easy to become cynical from this and say that nothing an average consumer can do individually matters, so why try, but that isn’t helpful either. I think so many people are caught in this feeling of wanting to help, and having grown up being taught about recycling and everything, taught that they CAN indeed help, and feel lost, with a baseline sense of “everything I do is more bad for the environment than it is good anyways.” At least that’s how I feel. Your videos are good reminders of actual facts and I always respect your opinions on these topics though!

@AxxLAfriku

2 жыл бұрын

AAAAAAHHHHH!!!! PAAAAAIIIINNNN!!!!!! I broke my hand yesterday because of the hate comments I get all the time. I was so angry that I punched a hole in my computer. Please don't hate me, dear n

@kronik907

2 жыл бұрын

Everything we do is bad for the environment but some things are worse than others, so lets generally try to do the things that are less bad than other alternatives. American society seems to be letting perfection get in the way of achieving the good. Our thinking should not boil down to "A change is not worth pursuing unless its outcome is perfect". Instead we should say, "A change is worth pursuing only if the outcome is measurably BETTER than what we had before". Solving a problem in small increments is always better than doing nothing and arguing about the definition of perfection.

@tessa_hs1827

2 жыл бұрын

@@kronik907 Totally!

@BLNChrisCross

2 жыл бұрын

Has anyone actual soucres for the amount of fishing Equipment etc. I was surprised that its so much ...

@PlatinumAltaria

2 жыл бұрын

Remember: There is nothing you can buy that is good for the environment, because consuming IS what is bad for the environment. Also please vote.

When I get overwhelmed with these choices, I remind myself to just start by using what I have. And if that’s plastic, well it’s only “single use plastic” if I only use it once.

@SmajdalfFrogi12

2 жыл бұрын

smart words

@Pingviinimursu

2 жыл бұрын

I have never met a plastic bag that only works once. How could I even trust it to hold my stuff for one grocery run, if I knew I couldn't rely on it for another? I need to buy a new plastic bag maybe once a month or every two months, and they all serve me several times. After they're too damaged to be relied on for groceries, they become the plastic bag I gather all my plastic in for recycling. Based on my current knowledge I feel like this is the best method that is possible with reasonable effort.

@brendamcleod4172

2 жыл бұрын

Except don’t drink out of single use plastic many multiple times because it is meant to break down and if you drink out of it numerous times you will be consuming microscopic bits of plastic. NOT good for you.

@rachelfountain1052

2 жыл бұрын

Yep! Garbage bags for cleaning out the litter box!

@margotkafka9762

2 жыл бұрын

@@brendamcleod4172 if someone wants to look up some scientific proof about this look at the effects of BPA

Some time ago I had a friend who went “zero waste” for a month. I recall her telling me about how she would make a longer trip to a different grocery store so that she wouldn’t have to weigh her produce and then use a sticker to determine its weight. She also told me she wanted to switch from monthly birth control pills to the shot so that it would save waste. I was baffled by this then, as I am now. Did she think a kind old lady walked the tomatoes to the grocery store and deposited them right into the food aisle? How could she take issue with a small produce sticker, of all things, when that produce arrived at the store packed in cardboard and plastic, on a delivery truck that burned fossil fuels? Was it worth the longer bus ride to a different store? Would a birth control injection really create less waste than one small packet of pills? Did she want us to return to the era of reusable syringes? This small conversation made a huge impression on me. For so many people, being environmentally conscious is far more about what *feels* or *looks* right rather than evidence and pragmatism. I’m not knocking the effort to go low-waste; I think it’s fantastic and we should all actively participate in mitigating climate change and environmental pollution. But not thinking critically about our actions will only get us into more trouble in the end. Even if the only changes we can make are small ones, we need to make those changes with a clear, rational head and an understanding of their limitations.

@nataliestanchevski4628

2 жыл бұрын

This reminds me of all the people saving the environment by making beeswax wraps. By ordering wax pellets from Amazon and having it shipped to their house. And then contaminating organics bins with waxed cotton when the wraps wear out.

@crstph

2 жыл бұрын

exactly-strict zero-waste lifestyles are all about making it so that YOU have less waste, instead of reducing the amount of waste caused by your actions. i saw a ted talk of a former zero-waste person who was like “it often amounted to the people i was shopping or eating with throwing away those things, and i realized that committing so staunchly to the idea of all ur waste fitting in a jar was more performative than helpful” im sure that person STILL uses less waste in a year than i do in a month, which is so great and helpful! but sometimes focusing so much on individual action backfires

@waffles3629

2 жыл бұрын

I really hate when people go after individuals in regards to medical waste instead of going after the companies. I'm chronically ill and I'm not gonna apologize for that.

@jeremiahglover7562

Жыл бұрын

I think for some people it’s about committing to the bit. It’s also about gauging how difficult/feasible it would be to go back in time to when there was a lot less waste.

“Simplicity is almost always a lie.” In other words, imagine complexly.

@kimz24

2 жыл бұрын

words to live by, truly

@28lyndsy92

2 жыл бұрын

Truth resists simplicity

@morganthem

2 жыл бұрын

Imagine everybody reading the study itself since Hank is in the process of telling us not to believe everything we see

@danielclaro6049

2 жыл бұрын

@@28lyndsy92 came here to comment this hahaha

@fraidarahbaran6076

2 жыл бұрын

+++

"We got them because they were swag at a conference." This is too real...way too real.

@lucency

2 жыл бұрын

Whenever I see one of these articles where people are feeling bad about buying tote bags I'm like..."you intentionally purchased yours?"

@markbour

2 жыл бұрын

@@lucency haha yes - we probably have a dozen and didn't pay for any of them.

@yureituesday

2 жыл бұрын

Right, that was my first thought ‘they keep giving them to me’

I'm set for life with the cotton tote bags I acquired mainly in my early 20s. It's unfortunate that they weren't as eco-friendly as I had initially been led to believe, but since I already have them, I'm going to use them until they're no longer functional so the resources used to create them won't have been in vain. If I live to be 100 and the bags survive that long, I might actually come close to 20,000 uses for some of them. I think it's really helpful to have this knowledge to be able to make better decisions in the future, like not buying any more bags, using the ones I already have, and finding better options if and when I can no longer use them. As a practical consideration, since I live in a city and walk to the grocery store (and more to the point, home from the grocery store), I find the cotton tote bags are easier for me to carry than single-use plastic because they have straps long enough to put over my shoulder. So while I do feel bad that the cotton bags are so resource-intensive, they're part of what makes it easier for me not to have a car, so hopefully that helps balance out a not-so-good choice with a better one.

@corriemcclain7960

2 жыл бұрын

Same. I have already gotten enough cotton totes for life, they work better for me and I plan to use them the rest of my life. One of the things I love about them is, since they are cotton, they are really easy to repair. My mother is still using the cotton tote bags my Grandmother made for her when she first got married. While my mother can't sew, I can and when my mom gets hole in bag or strap breaks, she brings them to me to fix. These bags are almost 50 years old now and still going strong. I think when you start thinking about things in the buy once for life it's one of the strongest mental changes you can makes.

@defenderofwisdom

2 жыл бұрын

For me I consider the next obvious solution to practice defencive civil disobedience against corporations until they do better.

@98Zai

2 жыл бұрын

I know this is literally "buy this thing instead!!", but whenever your bags break; get a good quality backpack. Like Hank said, vinyl is good and will last a very long time with the proper care & repair. It's also great for shopping! (even easier to carry than tote bags)

@patrickskelly8517

2 жыл бұрын

20,000 uses is the number you'd need to beat the plastic bag in every category they measured. If you only reuse your cotton bag 500 times, it'll be worse than plastic in terms of ozone depletion and water use, but it'll be better than plastic in terms of CO2 emissions, fossil fuel depletion, and probably in terms of ocean plastic (the study doesn't consider ocean plastic at all). Determining the "overall impact of production" would be much harder, because you would need to put all of those categories into the same units and add them up. How do you compare a gallon of wasted water to a kg of CO2 emitted? I have no idea. I agree its important to think about the cost of the alternatives instead of just saying "less plastic is better". But when the nyt takes that one number from the study and calls it the overall impact, I think that's not very accurate (another example of simplicity being a lie).

@sophietakach5683

2 жыл бұрын

@@patrickskelly8517 also this. Excellent summary of the complexity of quantifying impact in general.

I think there's a lot of wisdom in "the greenest bag is the bag you already have". It's permission not to stress about choices you made when you had less information. Dealing with getting a greener bag isn't something you have to worry about until the bag you have is no longer sufficient. I know that with certain marketing, there is pressure to buy the new greenest thing as soon as you can, even when what you have doesn't need to be replaced. I suspect that's part of where the stress regarding bags specifically comes from. People need things. You made your decisions in the past with the information you had. If that got what you need without the impact you were hoping for, it doesn't invalidate the effort made previously, nor require you to make up for it. It just puts you where you are.

"I think one of the difficult thing with how the world exists right now is that we're asked to care about, like, everything. I cannot care about everything and I SHOULD NOT care about everything, because if I do care about everything, I will care incorrectly about a lot of things. Instead, get this, different people need to care about different things deeply, rather than a lot of people caring about things on only a surface level." I needed to hear this so badly from someone I respect. Thank you.

@aperson6389

Жыл бұрын

Where's that quote from?

@Evilc

Жыл бұрын

​@@aperson6389the video's description

“The truth resists simplicity” has turned into “Simplicity is almost always a lie.” I like it Hank. Much more aggressive.

2:37 "If we're gonna care, we have to orient our care based on reality." I feel like this idea can be applied to so many other aspects of the human experience. Sometimes caring about something (or trying to appear to care) offers no real benefit without research/information on how the benefit can be implemented and a real effort to learn and help. Thanks for the thought train, Hank!

I need Hank Green to continue explaining things like reusable bags to ocean plastic to me because I learned more in the last four minutes than maybe the last year combined about waste

@Albinojackrussel

2 жыл бұрын

Scishow does a decent number of videos on this, and I expect he addressed it in crash course too

Took us long enough for the conversation to go from "is it good to be Green" to "how can we most effectively be Green". Of course it's better to know. The performative aspect might encourage others to care, but it has to take a back seat to actually doing the best we can for the environment. As John would say, "stupid truth, always resisting simplicity".

I work at a high traffic tourist bookstore in a major American city. The state law requires us to ask each customer if they would like a bag for 10 cents. It’s a rather thick bag and could easily be reused almost 20 times over, but I know that it’s usually not. I think we are making steps in the right direction, but the amount of misused information tends to cloud people’s judgement.

@markbour

2 жыл бұрын

One problem is the people who would re-use it likely already have a bunch of cotton totes. We run into this when we've forgotten to bring a bag and the only option is a super durable plastic bag, so I try to just go without if at all possible.

@alex-ut1rh

2 жыл бұрын

Every store in Canada now has to charge for their plastic bags. It’s made such a difference. Funny how people can change their shopping habit to save $0.25 and not in order to save the planet.

@WmRike

2 жыл бұрын

Powell's? :D

@danieljensen2626

2 жыл бұрын

It's kind of a toss up with the thicker plastic bags actually, a lot of people will still throw them away, in which case they're a lot worse as a single use item than the traditional flimsy bags which were intentionally designed to be produced with as few resources as possible. Laws that require those bags might actually be making things worse, no matter how well intentioned.

@laundryweather

2 жыл бұрын

I used to work at a large bookstore as well, and I found through trial and error that if I asked "do you need a bag?" the customer was much less likely to say yes than if I asked if they would "like" a bag. If you're allowed to change your language in this way, I recommend trying it!

I heard of a company that finds fishnet found from the ocean and turns them into bag. It's great because it already exists, and removes trash from the ocean!

@wylierichardson6519

2 жыл бұрын

Ocean plastic, while it seams great on the surface, is actually really unefficent. The amount of energy that has to be put into slowly collecting it all is already huge. Bit then a majority of it ends up being unusable because it has broken down to much, or its fishing net. Then it has to be all separated. And even then, it can only be reused like once. Not to mention, most companies who use it only use a small amount for green labeling because of how expensive it is. Edit: added link to info below kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZqNtj6ikg6uth6Q.html

@wylierichardson6519

2 жыл бұрын

kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZqNtj6ikg6uth6Q.html

This reminds me of the debate about plastic straws and an idea that I had a few months ago: I was raised to believe that the answer to the current environmental crisis is innovation. As a kid I thought the answer was that our lives would be almost the same except all the combustion engines and plastics would be replaced with batteries biodegradables. I don't think that's possible though. In order to get through this we need to radically change how we interact with the world and society. Electric cars aren't always the answer, sometimes it's changing cities to be more walkable and having more public transportation, and all these things we've had for decades or millennia, but they aren't as flashy so they don't get the capital or attention we need to implement them.

@jacobschuck3468

2 жыл бұрын

It reminds me of gradient descent and how sometimes following the quickest path towards your goal leads you to a dead end

@SmajdalfFrogi12

2 жыл бұрын

Saving the current climate isn't mainly about replacing the things we know and use everyday. I think it is mainly about changing your lifestyle, so your behavior does not results in an unmanagable amounts of pollution. Then if things remain that you really can not go without, only then should you try to make them as environmentally friendly as possible. For example cycling to work instead of driving if it's possible, and if you REALLY cannot cycle to work only then go for an electric car.

@MacNerd247

2 жыл бұрын

I would still say that a decent reusable bag is an example of how good design can change the way interact with a city. I live without a car and having to carry groceries home in single use plastic sucks. Single use plastic are designed to realistically be picked up like three times from checkout to trolley , to boot and to kitchen bench. Get past about 5 minutes of holding one these bags and they being to stretch with more than even 2kg of weight in them. Once that happens the handles cut into your hands. Most reusable shopping bags have handles long enough to sling over a shoulder, which from an ergonomic perspective is much more comfortable. Allowing people who live close with to stores under 15 minutes to go shopping without a car for smaller shops.

@crstph

2 жыл бұрын

yeah like, instead of making everyone use paper straws, why not just…use no straws when possible, and sip. sometimes the most “green” solution is taking something away, not adding something else

I have a little satchel that I use everyday from groceries, to carrying around a water bottle or umbrella, to bringing my lunch to work, etc. As a tote bag, it's probably not outweighed the equivalent in plastic bags, but as a convenient and useful tool, I'm exceedingly happy that I've only had to get one of them in years. Maybe getting something long-lasting and multi-purposeful is the key to getting rid of single-use plastics as an individual?

@emma70707

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, I find tote bags really useful for everyday carry. The cute ones definitely can be taken to work go to the beach or whatever where I wouldn't take a plastic bag. They also can hold more and heavier things than a plastic bag. That said, 20,000 is a heck of a lot to replace. Even if you would have gotten two to four plastic bags (what mine could hold equivalently) each weekend for groceries and buy a bunch of extra plastic bags (instead of reusing) to bring things to work, that's 38-48 years worth of daily single use plastic bags. Yikes. Lol. I try and choose alternative materials and to pass on things I'm done with to someone else who will use them...it would be loads easier though if there was some site where you could easily look up items and the energy/resource units they took to produce.

I had a friend who would say, “Perception is nine tenths of the law.” It is really easy to make choices because a thing seems good rather than by trying to figure out whether it is good. And people give more recognition and appreciation to tasks that seem like a lot of hard work than to things that are a lot of hard work.

"ignorance is bliss" say ppl who have the privilege to ignore the consequences of their actions

@matevzvidovic6708

2 жыл бұрын

Wow, yep, never saw it that way

@asthmatictuna

2 жыл бұрын

hah I love this. welcome to my memorable quotes document :)

The cotton vs plastic bag stats tend to only look at production impact and not the end of lifecycle (ie 50,000 plastic bags rotting in landfill/rivers is clearly much worse for wildlife than one cotton bag) but that’s just another example of simplifying something for the sake of their argument.

@waffles3629

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, the studies I've read always optimistically dispose of every plastic bag in the most environmentally friendly way. Even though that's far from the truth.

Changing one's mind when presented with new data/evidence is the ultimate sign of intelligence and reason.

@databillofrightsnowendmass5043

2 жыл бұрын

Check out the free speech social media Gab for an alternate reality.

The cotton tote bags have been sold as the ecological & better alternative to plastic bags. What about other "ecological" options, like food, skincare, clothes to name a few? How can I find out if it's better for the planet to drink oat milk over soy milk for instance? I also feel like adding a shout here seeing how complicated it is to find a real better alternative..

@neweyesable

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, there are groups looking at this. I was in a study where they were trying to create something similar to food 'nutrition' labels to go on products, but for the environment. Scoring the product against several crieria (not just CO2, but also water usage and several others), so that people would be able to make more informed choices easily. I think we really need to keep funding this sort of work, and then pushing politicians to implement it.

@trent6319

2 жыл бұрын

At some point we stop trusting marketing agencies and just put in a carbon tax. It will disincentivize the most emitting things in the most efficient way.

@Ana-ls4mu

2 жыл бұрын

@@trent6319 I would around that if my goal as a product maker is only to make money, if there's a carbon tax on my product, by default, I wouldn't look into making it more "sustainable" (CO2 wise at least), since I already pay the tax

@Junosensei

2 жыл бұрын

Science is a good way to determine the best alternatives, but it gets hard to find good studies when much of the discourse is created in media around falsified and poorly-reviewed studies often resourced by companies trying to shift attention away from their practices. I like to start with historically reliable journals in my search, but if nothing has been submitted to them on a topic, I'm often at a loss.

@EldeGaming

2 жыл бұрын

Highlt recommend looking up "Shelbizlee" here on youtube for stuff like this. Shes pretty good about calling out what "eco friendly" things arent actually friendly, and ik has been a good resource for me!

I think that “I’d rather not know” comes from the individualist and consumerist idea of being able to buy our way out of this problem (or any problem). We will not be able to buy things to solve the climate crisis. The free market will not solve the climate crisis. One person will not solve the climate crisis with their zero waste lifestyle or vegan diet (try as I might). In a world of movies/shows/books about one strong person saving the day, it goes against my instincts to say that this can’t be solved by some Protagonist somewhere, but we all kind of have to collectively take on that role.

@angryliterati2631

2 жыл бұрын

+

@katewoods8003

2 жыл бұрын

+ (Less meat & more plants makes such a huge difference! I completely understand why people don't want to know, and ironically, I think it's because those people DO care and to acknowledge the fact can be really painful. I respect it when people face that discomfort / pain and am happy for people to take it slow and make changes over time... however, I also want the positive impacts to happen right now and for everyone to get a hustle on. :') Compassion, patience and education for positive change!)

Not gonna lie, after that Scishow video and with some advice from my more creative friends, I've tried to avoid buying new things (in any situation) unless they're things that will be used for a long-ass time. Like especially clothes and plastic things, and try to make things out of or fix old things that I dont need that I have. Which I guess should have always been my approach, but i wasnt thinking about it as deeply. Anyway, just wanted to say that video kinda changed my approach :)

@elihinze3161

2 жыл бұрын

If everybody did this, the world would be a much greener (and much less hyper-consumerist) place! ❤️

I feel like we need to find better systems to avoid every human having to be knowledgeable about so much. It's just not efficient to multiply the effort of learning this stuff by every human. Instead a few humans can learn more deeply about each area. That's partly achieved by having articles summarize this stuff for us, but i don't think that's enough. It's partly achieved by organizations and governments acting on our behalf, but it's not trustworthy nor effective enough.

@graphicgraphites

2 жыл бұрын

Well said. It's unrealistic to expect every consumer to be making perfectly informed, eco-conscious purchasing choices every time they need to buy something. Especially when the science changes or isn't always clear. Most of the change needs to come from regulation and decisions upstream of consumers, and not simply expecting everyone to hold to "caveat emptor".

@vasundhara136

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, it definitely doesn't seem very efficient

The “I’d rather not know” stance is always an interesting one. I know so many people who actively avoid finding out more about factory farming and where meat is made, because they like eating meat and don’t want to feel bad about it. Which makes me think… well… you sort of DO know then, don’t you?

@EduAHArtmann

2 жыл бұрын

It's similar to the 'never visit a restaurant kitchen if you like to eat out' that everyone knows. It's easy to ignore something abstract, but once you have the concrete image it becomes a lot harder to push aside.

@the1exnay

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, i think that implies they kinda know and also have decided it's not a good reason to stop eating meat. Though that doesn't mean that more knowledge wouldn't change their decision. But... you can change what most people like if you give them trauma related to it.

@PlatinumAltaria

2 жыл бұрын

It's banned here, so I've never felt a need.

@spriddlez

2 жыл бұрын

My mother in law once asked me about why I was vegetarian and when I told her why she pulled a "I didn't want to know that." I rarely push it in people's faces but if you ask I will tell you because it obviously was important enough to completely change my diet over >__>

@LynnHermione

2 жыл бұрын

Nah. I don't care. I dont need to see manipulative videos of sad cows

I actually value this information. It’s good to know for me because it puts everything into perspective. Sometimes we just forget the impact of our actions.

That headlines should also be attacked. A less suicidal headline would be: "the bag you already own is the greenest bag you have, and we should move bag manufacturing away from cotton because it is resource heavy." But Noo! The news needs make people feel bad, so people will roll up their cotton bags and shoved them down their throat and choke on the bags in solitary with the earth. That's why people don't want to know. Because the headline word delivery system makes people feel like garbage. (like advertisements) - but maybe people need to be shocked? Maybe some, but not all? I'll take a spreadsheet over some eye-rolling personal narrative story at the beginning of an article. "Eh, Dude cotton bags are not that great. " "Yea." "Yeah cost too much to make, other stuff is better." "Oh good to know. "

@randygaming5134

2 жыл бұрын

shock value, more shock more clicks more money

I’m highly vulnerable to info-hazards and anxiety so in my case there are definitely some things I would be better off never knowing.

For me the difference I care about in regards to having a plastic vs cotton tote is biodegradability. Also, what's the alternative? I need something to carry my shopping in, and good cotton totes last 6-7 years for me before they are threadbare, at which point I shred and bury them in my compost, and they are gone within a few months. A plastic tote or a bag of any other synthetic material can't do this. So while I definitely believe cotton totes are too energy-intensive to be truly "eco-friendly", there's no viable alternative. When there's another kind of bag that can last years, is affordable, is packable, and fully biodegradable, then I'll feel like forgoing cotton is viable. So far though alternatives like bamboo are usually cost-prohibitive or are blended with synthetic material, rendering them useless in my eyes. I think it's good to know these things (because ultimately most of us just need to buy less stuff), but I think offering condemnation without alternatives is just counterproductive.

@nibblrrr7124

2 жыл бұрын

1:38 - Vinyl, or presumably also other strong synthetic fabrics. You may have a point if you only value biodegradability (probably because macro and or microplastic pollution?), but if you care a non-zero amount about global warming or energy/water/land use, you have to consider the impacts in all those areas as well, weighted according to how much you value them. Going by my personal values (mostly, prevention of suffering & long-term stabilization of civilization) & what I know, climate change is a much more pressing problem than plastic pollution.

@graphicgraphites

2 жыл бұрын

@@nibblrrr7124 My main issue with plastics and vinyls are that they're made from petroleum, tbh. The main answer for most issues is to just consume less product, but when I do buy something new, I'd rather it not be funding the petro products industry. So for me vinyl and poly products are just not ideal, and should only be bought second hand or not at all, in my view.

@05Matz

2 жыл бұрын

@@graphicgraphites While I've never heard of them being used for textiles, there are bioplastics (such as PLA, which is commonly used in 3D printer filament, self-removing surgical thread, and "biodegradable" plastic products, which can biodegrade in industrial composters and is harmlessly eaten away by animal tissue, but doesn't break down in most soil conditions) that are made from plant feedstocks instead (usually whatever is locally used for industrial starch/alcohol, corn in North America, I think tapioca in Asia, etc.). It still requires farming, with all the ecological costs that entails, they're not commonly recycled, and their biodegradability tends to be marginal or worse, but they are an option if you can find a bioplastic that they make textiles from -- I'd guess that PLA is too stiff to make a good fabric. There's also recycled polyester (usually made from recycled PET bottles, I believe). Of course, the shipping required to bring something exotic to you might burn enough oil to counteract the benefits.

This is one of those situations when all I have to say is just "everything is just too much."

Great video, Hank!! Thank you for helping me understand how to not have care-overload while still caring deeply about the things I think are important.

"Simplicity is almost always a lie." Words to live by in our modern age

The question "is is better to not know?" is a question that has been asked for a long time. I think back to Plato's Allegory of the Cave in which those who were left in the cave attacked and ridiculed the one who came back to tell them about the world.

Everybody says that they care about the "Truth," but most people behave as if what they really care about is feeling good about themselves and their choices.

@SamWest96

2 жыл бұрын

Oh damn, holding the mirror up today.

@CR-hu1db

2 жыл бұрын

No kidding! Truth is an abstract in a lot of ways. How you feel, as an individual, about your choices is a much more immediate reality for a lot of people.

@databillofrightsnowendmass5043

2 жыл бұрын

Check out the free speech social media Gab for an alternate reality.

Hi Hank, great video overall, and I agree that it’s always better to know but it’s also important to acknowledge that the ocean plastic issue which you situate with countries lacking robust waste management is actually an indirect consequence of our own plastic use. The US is the worlds largest user and exporter of plastic and much of the plastic that less developed nations dump into the ocean begins its life here and is exported to those countries for disposal. In many cases we know they can’t adequately dispose of that plastic and that it will wind up in the ocean but we export it to them anyway. What a mess.

I always took from that statistic "oh, plastic bags aren't that bad". Which fits well with the fact that the main bad thing i hear about plastic bags is that they require energy to make and their low cost implies it doesn't take much of anything to make them. I think the amount we should care scales with the importance of the issue. It's not a binary care vs don't care.

@SuperDoNotWant

2 жыл бұрын

And here is why that SciShow video was completely irresponsible. That is NOT the problem with plastic bags. The problem with anything made of plastic is there is a limited amount of oil that exists. It only exists on this planet, because it needed life to create it. Once we run out of it, there is NO MORE. Extracting it causes more and more harm to the environment the less of it there is. We need to reserve it for the things that it is really, really needed for. We do not need plastic bags. "Wah cotton takes a lot of water to grow and process" does not come even close to the scale of waste of using oil to make a plastic bag. So long as the natural water cycle is preserved, conserving water by not using cotton is actually not our largest concern right now. Places that are short of water are not short of water because of cotton. And a cotton farm never set the ocean on fire.

@guskohu2093

2 жыл бұрын

@@SuperDoNotWant yeah no. In australia cotton farming has completely and utterly destroyed the murray darling river and the owners of cotton farms are notorious for their use of dangerous pesticides. Plastic is a byproduct of fossil fuels which is a problem but it's better to utilise the material if we're going to keep using fossil fuels until they are phased out. And even though we do have finite oil we have decades worth of it most of which goes towards the transport sector in the form of gasoline. Using less fuel by opting for more ecofriendly transportation we could easily extend the amount of oil we have and we could also utilise other means of making plastic such as plants. Plastic isn't bad if anything it is one of the best materials since it is lightweight, uses less water, is extremely durable and it is sterile, single use plastic is where the problem lies since it is designed to be thrown away and yet is too durable so it can't decompose. Other materials like bamboo might also be better alternatives but all alternatives come with their own drawbacks so utilising them in locations where this is of less concern is the best option.

@the1exnay

2 жыл бұрын

@@SuperDoNotWant They don't use that much oil. Every gallon of gas is equivalent to like ~400 plastic bags worth of oil. Like, sure, it's a part of the problem, but a very small part of the problem when put in perspective.

Wonderful video Hank, I just wanted to say (on a completely unrelated note) that I watched this video while eating an air-fried corndog. You have influenced my life in even the smallest of ways. Thank you.

those converse extra cotton bags! i’ve been making them into scrap pillows : any little scraps that are too small to use in my quilting go into the bag, and when it’s full, i sew it shut, and it’s a really dense pillow.

@sirleebutler

2 жыл бұрын

(unfortunately, i find that the vinyl/duck totes have a shorter lifespan than the cotton ones because i can’t launder them and shit spills.)

The bright side is that it takes only 3-5 months for cotton to biodegrade and it's compostable! Vinyl takes about 200 years and a plastic bag takes up to 1,000 years, and both turn into microplastics, which are very bad. These are also important to take into consideration.

"There are no solutions, only tradeoffs," is the best thing I've learned from watching Practical Engineering. It defends me from defensiveness, and makes it easier to imagine things with more of the complexity that they have.

"Simplicity is almost always a lie." What a simple idea ;) On a more realistic note - I understand the ignorance. If you don't offer a simple or at least achievable solution one can implement, you will only achieve disillusion and depression. In the SciShow video the solution was simple - no matter what bag you have, try to use it as much as possible until it breaks and then dispose of it responsibly. This leaves achievable feeling - something I can try to follow. That's the difference.

One of my favorite quotes on this general trying to do good anxiety is from Jonathan Safran Foer's We Are the Weather: “The important measurement is not the distance from unattainable perfection, but from unforgivable inaction.” We shouldn't focus on the guilt of finding out something we tried to do good might be less effective than it was marketed towards us, and we also *really* shouldn't ignore it. The importance lies with taking the information and recalibrating to continue to do the most good we can. Yanno, learning and changing our actions as we learn. 💖

1:21 I don't know, I love when things come in packaging so good that I'm still using it years later, rather than some cheap thing that I would just throw away after opening it because it's not really fit for anything else. It gives me a lot of joy to find that something comes with a box or bag that would have been worth purchasing on its own, but instead comes free with something else. It definietly does give a feeling of quality and care, and I get a lot more out of what I bought when it comes with useful freebees. Also, when I'm still using them years later, they remind me of what they came with and where I got them, and make me more likely to buy from them again. They also generally have a logo on, so they serve as free advertising if they're good enough for me to keep using them. So yeah, I do really like when things come with high quality packaging that can be useful for years to come.

"It's better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable." - Carl Sagan

@databillofrightsnowendmass5043

2 жыл бұрын

Check out the free speech social media Gab for an alternate reality

My tote bags are made out of 100% hemp.... soooooo

@twojuiceman

2 жыл бұрын

Jason Bourne, it's Jesus Christ

"Simplicity is almost always a lie" is the best most accurate sentence I've heard in a long time.

You hit the nail on the head of my frustration with people who oversimplify environmental choices and get superiority complexes over those choices. People who replace beef with fish - ok, but commercial fishing is also terrible for the environment. People who go full vegetarian - ok, but farming exploits undocumented workers and uses child labor which is a wierd legal loophole for some reason in the US. There's no easy answers to any environmental problem.

I'm really glad I know this now, and I hadn't really thought about thrifting reusable totes, but I'm totally doing that if I ever find myself needing more in the future.

"good, robust, waste management systems like we do in the us" You mean the system where we put garbage in shipping containers and mail them to the 3rd world?

Love the video! We need to consider that the resource-intensiveness of creating a product is not the only consideration, but also the impact of how long the product will take to break down. Even within our robust waste management systems, single use plastic bags take decades to decompose in landfill and take up lots of space in said landfill. Whereas cotton is a plant fibre and so will break down a lot easier and quicker.

As for the reusable bags, guys there are SO many at 2nd hand shops. And you can mend them, it's not that hard! 2nd hand items are always best for the environment!

"simplicity is almost always a lie " I feel that

All bags are reusable if you're stingy/ecofriendly enough.

@PacifistDungeonMaster

2 жыл бұрын

"Yes" - me, who never actually buys reusable totes but just repurposes old grain sacks that my rice comes in because I refuse to throw them away and now have, like, 8 of them

This is one if the best things about my work. I work at a thrift store and we don't make or buy bags for customers to use. If they buy a backpack, a suitcase, a laundry basket, etc. I shove the rest of their things in it. If not, we give them bags that people donated. Often times it is the garbage bag people shoved all their stuff into to bring to our donation center. I also don't offer bags, but I give them if we have any and people ask for them. So often, when customers are asked if they want a bag, they say yes out of reflex rather than necessity.

I reused my 'single use' thin plastic store bags for YEARS after the city got rid of them.

This is the first time i have watched a vlogbrothers video when it was released.

@vlogbrothers

2 жыл бұрын

Welcome!

Ah remembering the times when (i think in t shirt and jeans) you said that jeans where good because they were (in your mind) environmentally friendly, times change

@vlogbrothers

2 жыл бұрын

There are so many things wrong with that song. The entire premise is "Wow, it's really good to blend in...why do people always want to do such weird stuff?" It's really fun to play though!

@AUnicorn666

2 жыл бұрын

@@vlogbrothers yeah! ^-^

I saw somebody repost the article and I didn't click on it because I already think about my use of bags and trying to minimize more coming into my life and using the ones I have to the fullest extent that I can, and I can't get upset cuz I'm not a cotton tote seller or purchaser. The phrase that you said about caring, and if choosing to care it should be rooted in fact really sits with me, cuz there is so much stuff to care about, that I need to find my capacity to care all the time, and find a line and stick with it so I don't get pulled in 100 different directions. Hopefully, however some people change their lines and deal with it, hopefully they can find themselves balanced and happy as well, cuz we are very often presented with no choices that do not come out with a consequence of waste in a disposable cultural landscape

Good that you deal with such dilemma's, Hank. Knowing is a must, even though if it hurts sometimes.

I've wondered the same thing about paper cups vs ceramic mugs. Yes, a disposable one-use cup seems bad, but a ceramic mug has been fired in a kiln and will have a much higher impact through it's production, and then there's the impact of repeatedly washing it. I have no idea which is better, but I want to know. #PleaseSendHelp

@thatjillgirl

2 жыл бұрын

If you already have the mug, the mug is better. It's always best to use what you already have. And if you don't already have a mug, there are always mountains of mugs at every thrift store I have ever been to. Always better to go with used than new.

@Enn-

2 жыл бұрын

@@thatjillgirl Yes, I understand this. My question isn't "Is it better to buy something new, or use what I have?" My question is, "Would the world be better off if we all used one-use, disposable paper cups, or if we all had a supply of ceramic mugs that we wash, with warm water and detergent, maintaining the same mugs until they've broken?" The complexities of maintenance are great, and I suspect the life of an average ceramic mug would slowly offset it's cost of production, but considering that a paper cup is compostable, I really don't know if the "cradle to grave" environmental impact ceramic is better than paper over the lifetime of the average ceramic mug for your average user.

@nibblrrr7124

2 жыл бұрын

​@@Enn- I'd also be interested in this, and whether it makes enough of an impact to be worth making different consumer choices. Apparently, paper cups are not necessarily compostable. Also, composting releases greenhouse gases, while ceramic or glass just sits there and is as harmless as rock or sand (tiny grains of glass are literally sand). AFAIK, producing paper and most plastics takes ridiculous amounts of water, presumably orders of magnitude more than washing them (esp. dishwashers are very energy & water efficient). Also, another (probably tiny?) aspect is that every cup needs to be shipped to the point of sale, and back for waste disposal, so while mugs weigh more, they probably last more than 1000 uses.

@Enn-

2 жыл бұрын

@@nibblrrr7124 Yes, it's all of the complexities and variables that make the average hard to find.

@thatjillgirl

2 жыл бұрын

@@Enn- Yeah, it's a good question. My suspicion is that the mug eventually wins, but that also assumes that you never accidentally break it.

So, the people that pushed for reusable bags were essentially… cotton a lie?

@pattheplanter

2 жыл бұрын

Linen their own pockets and stitching us up.

@eliallison7125

2 жыл бұрын

Nice

@yureituesday

2 жыл бұрын

😂

@benmcelwain5301

2 жыл бұрын

You mean the stores who now sell you a bag rather than give you a plastic bag for free?

@zolacnomiko

2 жыл бұрын

Ouch XD

You can also make a friendlier bag by up-cycling cloth within your home into a bag if you know how to sew! Jeans that can't be worn, bed sheets, shirts. That way you get a bag and the cloth doesn't end up in a landfill!

My nana crochets grocery bags out of plastic bags. She goes to Publix and empties out their bag recycling bins to make them. Lol They’re really nice bags!

"we don't have control over international" as if we have control of national

I'm loving this environmentalism series you've got going, Hank. You're saying some stuff that I want to live by.

My husband & I quote the Adam Ruins Everything line "It's always better to know." - Also I reuse those Vans shoe bags for pet treats or to wrap gifts. You can paint them or stamp them.

I have a cotton tote bag with a beautiful print of Maryam Mirzakhani on it because we did a fun project about women in mathematics with a bunch of friends and she's awesome. Well I use it as a handbag every day -- I cut up another old cotton tote bag I had lying around and created inside pockets for my handbag and I'm still adding more -- my next idea is to make a plastic-bag-lined pocket with a zipper, to keep the stuff I need to stay dry. I decided to use my tote bag as a handbag after I learned about this stuff. Because I figured "I won't want to use plastic grocery bags as a handbag, and I don't want the tough vinyl kind either, that's not very fashionable". I figure it's a good way to use my (now one) cotton tote handbag.

Since when does the US have a good robust waste management system? So much of the recyclables in first world countries get shipped overseas for processing, where they just get thrown into the sea because it's more economically viable to throw em away than to recycle them. Edit: and I'm sure you two already know that, at least im fairly certain I've heard hank talk about it somewhere. So, was it just cut/simplified for time? Maybe it's time to lengthen the video duration limit. Maybe there should be a slightly longer duration for videos that don't quite meet the criteria of an educational video, but talk about current events, like climate change, or other global injustices. Like, silly/non-informative videos would still be limited to 4 minutes, informative videos would be limited to 6-8 minutes, and educational videos would have no time limit.

Hank, i think your discussion around "caring" is completely valid. However, there were LOADS of flaws in this study as noted by "the people yelling on twitter". I'd encourage you and everyone else to check out some of the threads on there to see how the study achieved those crazy stats.

anecdotally in New Zealand we have banned plastic single use shopping bags , I recently realized I have not seen plastic bags on the beach in like 2 years and as a child walking the beach near my house I would ALWAYS find plastic bags in the sand . Now I only find plastic bottles and fishing stuff

Been saying since the 80's that this _throw-away-economy_ is not sustainable. When I was a child in the 70's every neighborhood had a market, a cobbler (shoe repair), an automotive repair shop, and an electronics repair shop. This far more sustainable lifestyle, and millions of small businesses and jobs, were purposefully destroyed by conservative-corporate-capitalism.

All my totes are conference swag... Feel like a completely noob walking around with my New England BioLabs tote 🙈

@flowerheit4512

2 жыл бұрын

I honestly have gotten to the point of wishing conferences would stop giving out swag... Like most of it is just junk that will take up space or go into the trash anyway, I'd rather have nothing

Earliest ever, and l love it.

I wonder if my mom's solution was better? She went around collecting leftover plastic grocery sacks from family and neighbours, cut them into strips, and crocheted them together to make reusable tote bags and bath mats. Grandpa still uses his grocery bag bath mat 10 years later because plastic is easy to disinfect and remove mildew from.

This is key information that i definately needed to know. Knowing is the key, u cannot fix something if you do not know it is broken!

I was introduced recently to the concept of “wishcycling,” or throwing something unrecyclable in the recycling because you wish it could be recycled. This seems similar. I do think a lot of people already have these bags. We have both cotton and polyprop bags that we use daily. And actually, I’ve got a cotton bag that’s going on 20 years old. It might actually make it to the point of being better for the environment than plastic.

But microplastics? Lol maybe I'll just carry my groceries in my arms.

@butterscotchgrove6151

2 жыл бұрын

Carrying groceries in your arms IS one way to reduce consumption....

Something I learned in an environmental science class in high school: of the three R's, reduce is by far the most impactful. I don't remember the exact statistic, but the waste produced in the resource extraction, manufacture, and transportation of a product is several times greater than the waste leftover by the consumer, but we can't directly see it so we often forget about it. When I was a kid, the most emphasis was placed on recycling the waste we could see (maybe because telling people to buy less is an unprofitable business model). Buying something I don't need just because it's "green" is much less ecofriendly than using what I already own, plastic or not.

Suggestion for using all the extra cotton bags you've already been given: storage/travel clothes bags! Especially draw string ones like that come with shoes, excellent for separating socks etc. while travelling and you don't need to buy cheap polyester packing cubes with zippers that break mid-trip. (Could also personalise them if you're crafty) Also handy for sorting your wardrobe or putting away seasonal clothing you don't need at the moment.

Tangentially related: Almost everyone I talk to about trans issues is completely shocked to find out how much governments discriminate against us, and especially that they've chosen representatives that support it. Please, if you can spare the time and energy, it is better to know. That goes for any topic, really.

I feel like some plastics exec is twirling his moustache and laughing maniacally that the entirety of western society is having heated arguments over shopping bag solutions. Are there not bigger/more impactful things we can dedicate discussion and campaigning to?

@marzissa

2 жыл бұрын

There probably are! But shopping bags are things that most adults in “western society” have to interact at least once a week, and it is a reasonable thing to want to get right. I have little to no impact on industrial fishing waste, but I do use shopping bags and it is reasonable for me to want to know about my own impact.

Absolutely. It's also important to note that using what you already have us *almost always* better than getting rid of it and getting something more environmentally friendly. Use the canvas bags that you already have until they fall apart. Keep them clean, patch them, pass them down. Maybe they could last 100 years. But when you have the choice between two similar things, weigh the practices that matter to you and pick the better one. Wasteful packaging? Doesn't pay employees? Manufactured by exploited foreign workers? Lousy terms of service? Exploits customers privacy? I'll pay a little more to get the thing that's less evil. If that becomes our culture, it will gradually shape the choices that are most profitable for businesses to make.

Similar thing in regards to palm oil. Yes there are unsustainable palm oil plantations however, it is the most efficient and high yielding crop for making oil and if produced sustainably it is so much better for the environment than other oils

So, something about this whole thing didn’t sit quite right with me. Not the reduce, reuse part of all of this but the original 2018 study. One thing that was impressed upon me during my masters was that Life Cycle Assessments (i.e. these impact calculations) are, almost counterintuitively, also severely limited in their objectivity. The specifications that are set and the weight at which each impact is weighed can have a huge effect on the final results. And there are a few things where this is also true for this study. Amongst other things, the way that a single-use is defined really puts especially the organic cotton bags at a disadvantage, to the point where relatively small changes (to the weight and volume definitions of a single-use) would have had the organic cotton bags at a factor 4x smaller impact compared to the plastic bags than they are now. Second and more importantly, there are 15 categories across which the environmental impact was assessed, but the number of reuses ‘needed’ is the highest number found across all of those categories. Which still doesn’t sound all that problematic until you get deeper into the details. Because for cotton bags, as stated even in a footnote of their executive summary (p18), the very high number of reuse times is due solely to the ozone depletion impact. Without this factor, the number of reuses goes down to 50-1400 for the conventional and 150-3800 for the organic cotton bags. Which is quite a shift from 20 000 times. Now you may think, ok but why shouldn’t we consider the ozone depletion impact? Obviously, we still want to make sure we protect the ozone layer. But, the ozone depletion impact for the cotton bags comes from the electricity used for irrigation. The dataset that was used for this LCA is based on a situation where much of the electricity is generated from natural gas. Transport of this gas uses two fire-suppressing and cooling gasses that have a very high potential in ozone depletion. So, then you get to two parts, the potential of decreasing the ozone depletion impact of irrigation of the cotton, for example by using renewable energy sources. And the consideration of the prioritization of the ozone depletion impact. Not only have great strides been made with regards to the recovery of the ozone layer, but other factors are much more at risk at this point in time when it comes to the ability of mankind to live on the planet. And some of the ways that plastic bags affect these factors, such as the impact of microplastic leakage and the ingestion of plastic material by marine life, were not taken into account in this study. So overall, take LCA’s with a grain of salt because reality is almost always too complex to model accurately to the full extent. And Hank’s point definitely still stands: there is a reason ‘reduce’ comes first in the line of reduce, reuse, recycle.

@lucentgriffin1194

2 жыл бұрын

+

@divawal5898

2 жыл бұрын

+

I wouldn't consider shipping plastic trash over seas as a "robust system." I think that there is a lot of room for improvement in the trash disposal system in all developed countries. Nevertheless collecting the stuff is still a significantly better solution than letting each household figure it out on its own. It used to be doable because, but with the current amount of food packaging I can hardly imagine that a decentralized solution would work.

The thing with reusable bags not being great for the environment that gets me is there's no other option in a lot of places these days. My province banned single-use plastic bags from all businesses. You can't get them. And we never did throw them away after the first use if they were still intact. Cat litter/dog poop bags, line wet work boots, transport food to a bring your own steak BBQ party, send treats home with that friend who notoriously doesn't return plastic containers, packing material for fragile Christmas ornaments, etc.

Great points hank! As a clothes horse, though, I feel compelled to note that the cotton bags you got with your shoes were probably not just packaging. They’re shoe bags for storage. They’re supposed to keep dust off your shoes, and keep things clean when you’re traveling or storing your shoes long-term. I find them incredibly useful, mostly because I’m the kind of person who keeps shoes for decades at a time

"It's an un-American idea, we think everything is about us." Is this what they call character development? Hank has achieved self-awareness?

I've been finding it harder and harder to put in the effort to KNOW recently. Especially when it's the big corporations that are actually to blame. Another good alternative for tote bags is stitching up the bottom of an old t shirt. Stretching out the life of the shirt and upcycling and all that good stuff. It's pretty simple to do, even if you're new to sewing.

We're stuck with cotton because they aren't farming hemp for it! They should. But they aren't. And even though the cotton impact sucks, here's my thoughts: my cotton bags (not the cheap breakable ones that the supermarkets make) have been looking great since I bought them. Two are over a decade old and the other three are more than five years old. If I lose the bags somehow, it'll be because somebody else has nicked one and is using it. I know if they somehow end up in the ocean, no ocean animal will get stuck in them because they're opaque and sturdy enough not to wisp around them and the straps are thick. It also will never be mistaken for a jellyfish by a turtle and will most likely sink to the ocean floor at some point and become fodder for ocean flora to grow upon. Tbh I'm more mad about cotton clothes. We have a lot of cotton fields here in Australia. They're mostly foreign owned, by China. Our government has a lot of deals in place, so that these farms can use our limited water supply, (namely the Murray-Darling river, which has been handed to these farms on a silver platter while it slowly dwindles and dries up and threatens all the wildlife and humans dependent upon it). We pay the cost for the water-intensive crop both monetarily and environmentally. Then cotton gets harvested and shipped overseas to China, so more carbon pollution from the shipping, since we aren't processing it here on location, which means lost jobs. Then it gets made largely into cheap, thin, fast-fashion clothing, shipped back here which adds more to the carbon footprint and more to the price, and then I buy cotton clothes because linen is hard to come by and I can't stand the plastic fabrics, and instead of lasting me ten years, the shirts I buy are manufactured at a thinness that in the 90s I would have considered the 'donate and buy a new shirt' stage, look worn out in a year and in five years they're relegated to the rag-bag or bed-shirts until too threadbare to be useful.

"The truth often resists simplicity" is one of my favourite Crash Course quotes.

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My favorite reusable bags? Plarn. If you crochet, it's fairly quick and easy to turn already-used plastic bags into "yarn" that you can make an incredibly sturdy bag with. My plarn has been awkward to knit with, but some people spin their plarn, and I imagine that would be easier to knit. Recycle the scraps, and if the bag wears out (I've never had this happen yet), recycle the bag! Obviously don't go get new plastic bags on purpose just for this, but if they're already used, you weren't going to do any better than recycling them, anyway, right? Okay, I know some of you have other ways to reuse bags, so I won't promise plarn bags are better than that. But if you're looking for the best reusable bags, I'll be shocked if anything is better than these. I've also used "recycled" yarn, unraveled from old sweaters, to make pretty good reusable bags. Definitely better than just trashing them, at least. Tips I had to figure out on my own: Don't make plarn bags super big. They stretch more than you'd expect. I'm sure this is truer if you knit them. Handles stretch a ton, too, so make sure you test it out if you're going with a shoulder strap. It's fine to use wide strips and a huge hook. I think the one I use is size P? It's not very pretty, but you can knock them out fast this way. I use loops of plarn, rather than one long strand, so that contributes to bulk. If I use narrow strips, I tend to use a J or K hook, but you can go smaller. Ask your friends for their used bags! Many of them will likely hand them over happily. I got so many that I had to stop accepting them. This is a great way to get a variety of colors, if you care about that. My favorites are the little bags that newspapers are delivered in. Some of them come in a wide variety of colors.

One thing that helps me accept facts like this is to reject the narrative that I -- me, as an individual -- should feel *guilty* for climate change. It's not my fault. It is well and thoroughly not my fault. If I look at myself as a rebel against the system -- finding ways to subvert the carbon heavy world I never chose to live in -- instead of a perpetrator of the crime, it's a lot easier to digest information like this. I was sold the idea that cotton totes are good for the environment. Maybe I could have done a better job of informing myself, but no one is fully informed about everything at all times. So now, moving forward, I have this new information for my fight and I have a warning not to fall into similar traps going forward. I'm not to blame, but I can take responsibility for making things better to the extent that I'm able.

I think one of the important elements with the cotton bags research, that is worth remembering, is that it is a good way of seeing the problem in a bigger more complex way. Not just through the lens of the carbon footprint For example in the same research (if it's the Scandinavian one) there are paper bags, and while they're more intensive per bag to produce they decompose much faster than plastic bags and won't end up clogging rivers and oceans like their plastic equivalent. If we ONLY look at carbon emissions they plastic bags seem like a no-brainer, but if we also start considering the impact they have on the environment outside of the carbon footprint alone the issue gets far more complex. The same can be said for many of the problems we have to deal with when it comes to climate change and our general ecological footprint. Ultimately, maximisation is not (IMO) the way to combat our impact on the climate. We have to aim for solutions that minimise most ill-effects by a bit, rather than one thing by a lot and the rest not at all. I'm all in on the paper bags train myself.

My reversible canvas bag that was gifted to me in High School (I'm 30) has started to ware around the handles. Not much, but enough to start reconsidering in how heavy I pack it, especially for Church. I know I can re-sew the handles if it comes down to it. I sought out a new, larger cotton/canvas tote with a quote/design I wanted on Etsy bc I want to support small business. This was for the express purpose to preserve the other tote I've had for about 15 years now. It helps to have a larger bag too, not going to lie, even if it's less structured. I'll be using both for years to come, only in part, because I'm young. Once the bags have served their purpose, I might make them into book covers, re-useable gift wrap, as materials for a refillable notebook, etc. I like to take old jeans that don't fit or can't be worn anymore, cut them up and refashioning them into book bags and backpacks. It's easy too. I've done it for a lot of bags that don't serve a more formal purpose.