As easy (and understandable) as it is to complain about paper straws and the like, the truth is that it’s overall a new positive to not create trash that will outlive multiple generations of humans. However, the bad news is that we all have a long way to go.
The “Anticonsumption” online group shows the environmental effects of producing, moving, and buying too much stuff through memes and insightful posts. Hopefully, these images might be some good food for thought, so get comfortable, be sure to upvote the posts that caught your eye and comment your thoughts below.
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Came Across This On Facebook
My Haven
Exactly
I have a 2017 Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid; meaning it has an electric engine and a small gas engine. When I bought it in 2019 it got 60 miles of electric. Now it gets about 30. You can't buy a new PHEV that has more than 35 miles of electric. Electric car batteries are the only technology that gets worse with science. But it sure does encourage buying more cars. Thanks Corporation.
Looking at all the examples here might lead someone to despair, so it’s worth also highlighting that it’s not all doom and gloom. For example, just this week (November of 2024) Australian scientists have developed a method to recycle old textiles into concrete. The fashion industry and fast fashion in particular create mountains of waste, so this is a great step forward.
Remember, many of us purchase cheap clothing that tends to not even last a year, creating monumental water waste for products that end up in landfills at the end of the day. This is a good and sustainable way to turn that junk into a considerably more valuable commodity, construction materials.
"The Heroes We Deserve"
It’s All Of Our Responsibility, As Inhabitants Of Earth, To Reduce The Impact We Make Upon It! If You Love This Earth, And Want To Make It A Better Place, The First Place To Start Is Living And Shopping More Sustainably! Creating Less Waste Is The First Step In Making Our Earth Healthy Again
Local Funeral Home Offers This $85 Cardboard Casket. What A Great Way To Not Waste Money And Resources
Speaking of emissions, researchers from the University of Massachusetts are working on “agrivoltaics,” a method to help farmers utilize even more of their farmland. The crop? Energy, gathered from solar panels placed across the land. Farming does come with its own emissions, but let's face it, we need food, so might as well make it more efficient.
Because Of The Anticonsumption Mindset, I Have So Much More Respect For Someone Driving A Normal-Sized Old Truck Than A Brand New Gigantic One
My Mother's Blender, Still Choochin Just Fine After 4 Decades Of Use, With All The Original Parts
Your Life Has Already Been Designed
You may have noticed that behind most of these developments are researchers and scientists. It’s easy to get lost in the promises of green entrepreneurs, but at the end of the day, it’s research, both privately funded and publicly funded that is going to end up helping our environment.
True True True
Blue Shell The 1%
Made A New Cat Scratch Pad From Trash
Should This Be Implemented Throughout The World?
"Should This Be Implemented Throughout The World?" You mean offering paying jobs to homeless people to help them get back on their feet? I realize picking up garbage isn't a dream job for most, but it's a start to get them food, a place to stay and be able to look at other jobs that won't see them as "homeless" but as actual "potential employees"
A Book From The 70s Based On A Computer Model Based On Just A Few Inputs Roughly Predicted The Next 50 Years, We're At The Brink Of Ecological Breakdown, Billions Live In Dire Poverty And The Rich Own More Than Half Of The World's Wealth. If That's Not An Alarming Bell, I Don't Know What Is
There will come a point where the impoverished will no longer have money to buy from the rich, and the whole thing will just collapse. I'd hope that the issues will get solved before it comes to that, but looking at the world's current state...
The Recycling Shop Near Me Has Free Used Paints And Chemicals!😊
This Is A Great Incentive To Get More People Recycling And Cleaning Our Earth! However, We Must Keep Working To Limit Our Plastic Production And Live Sustainably!
As Seen Elsewhere
Sushi Place Put My California Rolls In A Tupperware Container I Brought Them!
Yikes
I really, really appreciate people's commitment to deadnaming Twitter.
We Can Do It Again!
♻️a Drain In Karachi, Pakistan. Hard Work Can Go A Long Way In Cleaning This Earth! Use Less Waste And Work On Picking Up Litter During Your Day! Live And Shop Sustainably ♻️
A Whopping 58% Of Food Is Wasted Or Lost In Canada Every Year. The Pandemic Has Put Extra Strain On An Already Inefficient Food System As We Saw Farmers Forced To Dump Milk And Abandon Crops Due To Plummeting Demand
Pretty Much Sums It Up
My Wife With A $4 Toy Basket
Which Would You Rather: Cheap Clothes, Or A Habitable Planet?
We had a couple of decades to fix the crisis in the 70's. (Thanks Reagan /s) A decade or so to mitigate the crisis in the 90's or not hit any tipping points. Now we have a 'decade' to keep the crisis from becoming 'too bad'
Pulled From A Local Pet Stores Dumpster
This Smoothie Place I Went To Gives You Mason Jars To-Go, And Fills It Each Time You Bring It Back
This Sculpture Represents The Amount Of Plastic Found On Only 2 Miles Of Coastline In The UK. We Can Do Better! Live And Shop Sustainably
The Irony Of These Items Is Too Much
This Mother’s Day Ad I Received In The Mail Made Me Sad
"Don't enjoy something handmade with love just for you - buy soulless overpriced c**p from a greedy corporation! You wouldn't want to make the corporation SAD, would you?"
Shows How Outrageous Pricing Has Gotten, But At Least This Is A Small Step Towards Sustainable Consumerism
They are hanging on because new cars expect you to have an I.T. degree to operate them and sell subscriptions for every ridiculous add on.
And STILL charge a ton at purchase, on top of that these monthly fees - inoperable times due to updates.. and somehow this is 'good'??
Load More Replies...My girl is 12 and counting. My BF's car is 22. I poured some beer on her hood last year (21st birthday--in US that's the legal drinking age).
Apparently OP didn't pay attention when they explained what "sustainable consumerism" is. Average light-vehicle fuel efficiency doubled in the 1974-2024 time frame. Cars 10 years or older are about 10-15% less efficient in fuel consumption, generating 1.5X the CO2. It is just considering ICE, this dramatically improves if ce consider hybrids or EV. If you drive 80k miles on a 15-years-old vehicle the extra pollution exceeds the environmental impact of building a new mid-sized sedan. "Sustainable consumerism" would be favoring fuel efficient vehicles and easing transition to less polluting technologies.
Fuel consumption takes a while to have any reduction in polution/emissions due to the environmental cost of building the car in the first place. It also matter how many miles you do a year - a new car doing 50k miles a year emits more than old car doing 1k miles a year.
Load More Replies...I read that many cars in Cuba are 1950s models for some reason but the thing is it can be done!
i prefer to buy my 'new' car closer to 10-15 yrs old--bonus points for the least amount of electronics c**p!
My daughter had to scrap an 8 year old Jeep. It needed a new engine control module, no one makes a replacement part. The module was designed so a used part from another Jeep could be used. I told her not to buy a Jeep that was built by Fiat in Italy.
I'm loving my 2007 Prius, named Mambo, and she is the most reliable, comfortable and easy on the purse stirngs vehicle I've ever owned (well, except for the one I had before her, Marvella.
Hi, tech brain here. I propose a multi-user vehicle that will allow you to get on, and off, whenever you like. It will work by subscription or single use. I shall call it the… Can’t decide between tram, bus, or train
I had an 89' Hyundai hatchback as a first vehicle that consistently got a little over 30 mpg. It could tow more than its weight for long distances. My folks borrowed it twice for lugging large furniture from the Wisconsin back to Delaware back then. I had it over 25 years. The Hyundai shop mechanics were starting to use it to show the younger mechanics what the older models looked like. Hyundai and third-party manufacturers were no longer making the parts like the electrical harness or the larger pieces like struts long before the time I got rid of it.
I Wouldn’t Care If People Vaped If They Weren’t Generating So Much Plastic Waste
Surely They Would
"And what good does it do you to own the stars?" "It does me the good of making me rich." "And what good does it do you to be rich?" "It makes it possible for me to buy more stars, if any are discovered." - Antoine de Saint Éxupery, The little prince
Courtesy Of A Canadian Grocery Chain
Neighbors Threw Out Their $5400 Play Set Because It Was “Rotten”. Just Needed Some Paint, Good As New
Prime Day Be Like
From My Days Working In A College Dining Hall
"Work, Consume, Die!"
The Weight Of Different Breeds Of Chicken Over Their Lifespan
This is misleading, in the fact it is often used to imply unethical practices such as hormone use or animal abuse. Chicken weight more on average because *we now raise different breeds*, that start to put on muscle mass faster and reach full maturation at 6 weeks of age instead of 12-15. Improved selection, crossbreeding and more controlled, better nutrition also brought new breeds that have more breast and leg muscle mass -the more valuable parts- compared to older breeds; other specific breeds are now used for egg laying because of better quality and dimension. The industry moved to better nutrients (for faster growth if not for health), more controlled raising facilities and more consistent feeding. Other than increased meat production, this had also other advantages: the risk of illness for industrial poultry decreased 66% in just two decades and the percentage of livestock loss during the rasing phase is now barely 1/5th of what used to be.
Found At The Park And Grabbed Before My Daughter Could. Turns Out It's Disposable. What A Waste Of Material For One Use And Screw People Who Leave These At Parks 🙄
But I’m A Creep 🎶
Now There Are "Disposable" Vapes You Can Play Games On
Aside from being even more wasteful than the already egregious disposable vape, this thing is clearly aimed at children (and others whose brain hasn't developed past a certain point) and is designed to try to make vaping even more addictive. Vaping products should be legally required to be boring and uncool. They're already d***s. We don't need to make them more exciting.
Five Below Propoganda
No Words
In some cases wouldn't that trap the ethylene making it go bad faster.
Making It Look Like A Bigger Amount Is More Important Than Using Less Plastic
I hate companies that do this. You open it up and it is just dead air under the photo.
We're Doomed
What Was The Point Of The Plastic Bag Ban If They're Simply Going To Rebrand Them?
The good plastic bags are still better than the single use (and the not even an entire single use, break immediately, completely useless) bags that can't be reused. Even if it's technically identical to the disposable bag, if people are actually using it multiple times, it makes a difference.
2 Billion Dollar Home In Mumbai Built On Orphanage Land Worth 10 M, Sold For 2.5m, Overlooking Slums
That's the building of those a******s who recently had the wedding for several hundred million.
On To The Next Fad
I would be embarrassed to own one of these now. After watching those videos of people jumping over the counter at Starbucks to steal one and pushing people over to grab one on sale. No thanks. I feel like your life lacks meaning if you need to do this. And for what ? How low is your self esteem that you need to show some random product as a win.
This Just Completes It
When I was growing up, jelly came in glass jars with lips sized and threaded to accept canning lids to make them reusable. Soda came in reusable bottles with a nickel deposit. Us kids would get spending money by picking them up along the road to turn in, helping keep the roadside clean. Flour came in printed cloth sacks to be sewn into clothing items or used as kitchen towels. Cereal came in a cardboard box with a heavy wax paper bag inside. There was a distinct lack of plastic packaging. We reused, repaired, and recycled directly. I was actually talking about this with the wife earlier this evening. Our family of 5 back in the day sent less garbage out in a month than a couple today sends out in a week, or even a few days now. And so much of it is plastic packaging.
I can only agree... I myself, often do repairs of almost any kind of electronics or technical parts where i can, and can get hold of spare parts (which is a BIG issue these days). I really hate it how they lock down spare parts by software, even batteries, so they can not be swapped, or stopping cartridges from being re-filled by the chipping etc.
Load More Replies...How is not being materialistic somehow equate to communism or socialism? I think it’s called being an adult. Deferred gratification. Living within your means. And all the other, boring, hated, moderation ideas of generations past.
Capitalism requires constant growth to perpetuate itself, minus the baked-in economic collapse every decade or so. It needs people to buy random things, otherwise line not go up ):
Load More Replies...Back in my day, growing up Catholic meant growing up anti-consumption. Comedians make fun of Catholic parents for teaching guilt, but yeah, don't put it on your plate if you aren't going to eat it; question if you really need it before you buy it; and the fashion of jeans hasn't changed that much since your older sibling got them.
And fashion comes back around. Really wish I still had some of my outfits from the 90s.
Load More Replies...We should talk to the Amish, seriously I would go live with them right now if they would take me.
As long as they don't get political and goes overboard on things, but stay pragmatic, realistic and acts where things does not make sense, then fine. The big issue i have with most "movements" these days, is just this - they go overly political and into areas that doesn't concern them and the movement, becoming a "meh" at all they do trying to become everything to everyone, rather than focusing at the problem at hand, and do that one or a couple of things well.
I remember when the local government brought in the recycling bins. First they said it was to reduce the cost of the 'Council tax'. A few years later it was then 'Better for the environment'..so people put the rubbish in the appropriate bin. The council then comes around, collects the bins for recycling and they all go in to the same vehicle. Companies, governments and organisations will say anything to make them seem better than they REALLY are.
Your local government? Well that socks. As a resident though you have so much power in creating awareness and change. Working locally is rewarding, the results are right there to experience.
Load More Replies...When I was growing up, jelly came in glass jars with lips sized and threaded to accept canning lids to make them reusable. Soda came in reusable bottles with a nickel deposit. Us kids would get spending money by picking them up along the road to turn in, helping keep the roadside clean. Flour came in printed cloth sacks to be sewn into clothing items or used as kitchen towels. Cereal came in a cardboard box with a heavy wax paper bag inside. There was a distinct lack of plastic packaging. We reused, repaired, and recycled directly. I was actually talking about this with the wife earlier this evening. Our family of 5 back in the day sent less garbage out in a month than a couple today sends out in a week, or even a few days now. And so much of it is plastic packaging.
I can only agree... I myself, often do repairs of almost any kind of electronics or technical parts where i can, and can get hold of spare parts (which is a BIG issue these days). I really hate it how they lock down spare parts by software, even batteries, so they can not be swapped, or stopping cartridges from being re-filled by the chipping etc.
Load More Replies...How is not being materialistic somehow equate to communism or socialism? I think it’s called being an adult. Deferred gratification. Living within your means. And all the other, boring, hated, moderation ideas of generations past.
Capitalism requires constant growth to perpetuate itself, minus the baked-in economic collapse every decade or so. It needs people to buy random things, otherwise line not go up ):
Load More Replies...Back in my day, growing up Catholic meant growing up anti-consumption. Comedians make fun of Catholic parents for teaching guilt, but yeah, don't put it on your plate if you aren't going to eat it; question if you really need it before you buy it; and the fashion of jeans hasn't changed that much since your older sibling got them.
And fashion comes back around. Really wish I still had some of my outfits from the 90s.
Load More Replies...We should talk to the Amish, seriously I would go live with them right now if they would take me.
As long as they don't get political and goes overboard on things, but stay pragmatic, realistic and acts where things does not make sense, then fine. The big issue i have with most "movements" these days, is just this - they go overly political and into areas that doesn't concern them and the movement, becoming a "meh" at all they do trying to become everything to everyone, rather than focusing at the problem at hand, and do that one or a couple of things well.
I remember when the local government brought in the recycling bins. First they said it was to reduce the cost of the 'Council tax'. A few years later it was then 'Better for the environment'..so people put the rubbish in the appropriate bin. The council then comes around, collects the bins for recycling and they all go in to the same vehicle. Companies, governments and organisations will say anything to make them seem better than they REALLY are.
Your local government? Well that socks. As a resident though you have so much power in creating awareness and change. Working locally is rewarding, the results are right there to experience.
Load More Replies...