It’s a good question to have at least asked, which is more than most people, don’t worry about the couple unnecessarily cynical responses you’ve received 
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Unfortunately I’m well aware of this and it plays on my mind. It’s hard for me to avoid the negative impact of my job and I often wonder abut doing something else but that’s not an easy decision to make. I sometimes have classic middle-class daydreams about quitting the “rat race” and becoming a farmer or something but it’s a nonsense really, we can’t all be growing organic vegetables or trying to cure cancer, there aren’t enough of those jobs going around. This is why I come back reducing footprint and being more self-sustaining. Probably need to go on a bigger scale and get some solar panels and a battery etc, not worry about a synth.
Thanks mate. I don’t think anyone has been rude and sometimes people are justifiably cynical at the state of the world, I know I am at the moment.
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one more thing to add, recycling plastic is mostly a myth, so choosing hardware by the materials is another thing to keep in mind when choosing your next piece of gear.
actually, any recycling requires energy investment, so just to reinforce my previous comment, buy second hand fixable gear is the most eco friendly approach…
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you are correct, I too try to be as eco friendly as possible, but in reality most of the pollution (I think it’s about ~70%) in the world is coming from like a 100 companies, most are energy / chemical producers, so it leaves the whole other 30% of the world pollution to literally everyone esle across the globe, so in theory, even if everyone else would be 100% eco friendly, the world still would be fucked because of those 100 companies…
so yeah, I suppose worrying too much as a person is cynical to some, personally I still maintain being as eco friendly as possible with things like buying local produce, trying recycle as much as possible, eating responsibly, etc., but in reality our efforts are feasible compared to industrial contribution to pollution…
https://peri.umass.edu/greenhouse-100-polluters-index-current
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As a person that grew up in a somewhat frugal conditions, I can add a few on top of what everyone wrote here.
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Eat local food. This is very important. Less avocado quinoa tuna poke bowl crap and more carrots, flax and sauerkraut from your mom and grandma! Do not fall for trendy fads, all substances are made from the same matter after all.
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If you’re not vegan, buy meat and fish from the farmers market. Not only it’s much more responsible, but it tastes much better and has way more healthier nutrients. For example, homegrown eggs have amazingly huge and tasty yolks.
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Buy used clothes from thrift stores and get yourself a sewing needle. Don’t throw away old clothes. If you absolutely don’t want it, you can give it to charity or to some poorer neighbours/extended family members, etc.
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Also, nice, a tad bit more expensive pair of shoes is just night and day. Remove shoes at work, if that’s possible - it will reduce weariness by a lot (I suppose you don’t wear them at home like muricans)
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Choose public transport. Even riding an old gas-spitting bus is probably at least 50 times better than driving your own car.
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Once again, DO NOT FALL FOR GREENWASHING CRAP. Companies use this as a marketing strategy…
It’s a tricky one from my perspective - because what everyone is saying is true, our personal impact is almost negligible - but I don’t think that means we should stop trying, or making differences where we can.
For example ok, only 5% of plastic recycling is actually recycled? Well it’s no more effort for me to put it in a separate bin and that’s 5% more than if I hadn’t. So I’m not sure what the takeaway is supposed to be there.
I’m still going to be reducing before I reuse and recycle, bit I’m still going to recycle.
Sometimes it just feels needlessly negative. What’s the goal of spreading that knowledge if not to generate apathy? It’s not provided with any additional context.
If everyone asked these simple questions and made differences to the way they lived, that would bubble up to the organisations that are managed by the same people and it’s all contributing to the mess were in.
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See that’s an interesting one. I have read that the cars with auto shut-off engines (so the engine doesn’t just chug away at traffic lights etc) reduce emissions by about 5%. OK, so it’s “only” 5% but it’s 5% of a hell of a lot of cars that now have less emissions.
Every little helps and doing something has to be better than doing nothing.
But, of course, big business needs to play their part as well.
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yeah for sure, I don’t say “fuck everything we are doomed”, I advocate “be the change you want to see”, but I do understand why many people see it pointless and give up…
I wish everyone would take environment more seriously, because it’s not actually that hard to be more conscious and educated about it…
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My country introduced bottle (both plastic and glass) recycling stations in 2016 and they really work. You get back 10 eurocents per bottle. That amount is very little and kind of symbolical, but it is very sucessful. Basically, all people started recycling other things, even older people, now we have brand new proper recycling containers in every single yard, streets became very clean, people are proud.
I totally understand the apathy, in all honesty it’s how I feel. Hopeless.
But it’s very common to see. Someone will ask ‘how can I improve my impact’ and someone will come along and say ‘don’t bother only corporations count’. It’s reductive and unhelpful even if partially true…
That’s not aimed at anyone here, it’s just what happens.
yeah we have that too, but how much of these plastic bottles actually being reused as bottles? lemme tell ya, almost zero… they just repurpose the plastic into something else, which maybe saves some crude oil from being used but it never goes back to be the same product and it takes lots of energy / land / logistics to for this “recycling” process. maybe it works bit better in some countries then others, but in general it’s far from being a viable solution.
Yeah, that’s true, but that’s one step. It leads to next steps as I just said. People become more aware.
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Well it also stops plastic reaching the oceans, which is one of the biggest problems with plastic, that it doesn’t decompose. That’s why it’s so important to re-use and recycle it, even if it’s energy intensive.
I suspect energy reclamation with regard to plastic has its own issues due to what’s released when it’s incinerated.
I’m not sure what this means to be honest. It helps, therefore it’s viable. Are you saying it doesn’t compeltely fix the problem? Is that the bar that any environmental policy needs to reach, completely solve the problem? Cause I can tell you there isn’t one of those, all we have is lots of small stuff.
Didn’t take long to find that cynisism 
yeah, that’s true… however eliminating plastic from the supermarkets would be far better solutions. hemp for example can replace many plastic solutions and it’s bio degradable, that’s on the manufacturer responsibility to implement it, a person that’s throwing his bottles / plastic wraps into one place will not force manufacturers to change course.
also, one of the biggest polluters of the oceans actually the fishing nets dumped into the oceans, it’s about as half of the ocean pollution in general, so again, while I do think that it’s important to recycle, when you look beyond it you can see that you as a person is relatively a small problem for the environment. the big offenders are beyond our reach…
101% agree - but that isn’t going to happen today, tomorrow, or even in 10 years from now, so in the meantime we need to ensure we deal with what we have as best we can. We can’t all just wait for a Big Solution.
And yes fishing is bad, but that’s whataboutism tbf - that’s just something else that needs to be fixed!
Saving energy
sorry mate I was making a bad joke
I’m saying that this is the real issue, not saying “don’t do stuff”, I’m just saying that I understand why people don’t give a shit…
now, how hard can it be? if they (goverments) can invest LOTS of money into “recycling”, why can’t they invest the same money into producing better solutions and force the manufacturers to use them?
for example the USB-C mandate in Europe, that’s cool, forcing the manufacturers to be more eco friendly, why can’t they do it with other producers that are REAL and immediate issue?
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Ah now this is a good topic of course - and I suspect we all know the answer unfortunately.
It’s definitely a problem we can potentially best resolve at the voting booth, but we also need the people to vote for in the first place 
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