alechko
41
years ago I was at Boom Festival in Portugal, it was very “eco conscious” event (~40-45k people) and they banned all food vendors from using single use plastic, they forced them to buy locally produced hemp cutlery, I was amazed by the quality of the product, it was so much better then the plastic shit, and you would throw it in the “organic” bins.
I don’t know why a goverment that can spend tens / hundreds of millions for recycling infrastructure can’t invest in local hemp or other plastic alternative solutions and force the manufacturers to use them.
too much money invested in the current flow of things I suppose…
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In the UK they make very small moves in this regard.
No more single use plastic bags (or close to), no more single use plastic straws.
It all should have happened 20 years ago and we need more of it, but it’s progress at least 
A tax on packaging would have a huge impact I suspect - especially where it’s used for marketing purposes and not protecting the product.
The forthcoming energy ‘blackouts’ in the UK will give us all that lovely guilt-free free feeling we’re after!
My only advice to your original question(s) is NEVER buy an electric car. They are not the great white hope we are being told they are. It’s just moving the problem to a different part of the chain (i.e. the carbon footprint of an electric car is front-loaded and happens when the batteries are made, whereas with a fossil fuel car it’s spread across the lifetime of the car). Electric cars are simply the government’s way of extracting money from those of us who care for the environment - they are nothing to do with saving the environment at all.
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Orest
44
To be honest, I don’t think about my CO2 footprint at all and don’t think i have to. This doesn’t mean I don’t care about the climate or future generations, it’s just that this is not my responsibility. Growing up in a poverty-class household my footprint has always been very low, not due to a conscious decision to refrain from holidays, owning a car, etc., but because we never could afford this. I just don’t believe I have to have a bad conscious because of the little bit of luxury (which is not much) I can afford by now. I still don’t own a car, share a flat and go on holidays maybe once every two years… in this context, thinking about the environmental impact of my music making seems ridiculous to me. I think it is consequential, that climate-activists, e.g. fridays for future, who predominantly have a privileged, academic class background are - like others youth movements before - rebelling against their parents and want to atone for the high CO2 emission they grew up spending. Still, because they have this background, their CO2 emission in most cases is probably still above average: ironically the higher your climate-consciousness, the higher is your footprint
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Glad I wasn’t the only one that felt this. Part of me thought “well this will mobilise us as a people, hygiene will advance, we’ll be better prepared for emergencies - finally the west will wear masks when they’re sick so they don’t make everyone else sick like they’ve been doing in asia for decades”
Instead apparently everyones brains just fell out instead.
Anyways my voice is too loud in this chat, I’ve said my piece haha - good luck everyone! 
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Thanks for all the interesting perspectives. I think “food for thought” is generally a good thing and there’s plenty here.
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enju
48
If you are thinking about the energy consumption of your computer, you already have one if the most efficient computers available. So ftom this standpoint your setup is quite perfect I guess. I don’t think that a setup of hardware stuff would consume much less, only if you have a really big screen that would not be true.
On the other hand every other device you buy will be a problem for the environment in some kind of way, so I guess producing on a computer you already have for other tasks and using this for a long period of time (when it is as energy efficient as yours) is the best way.
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ooli
49
In 2019 I was also curious about the power consumption of synths and such, so I started a thread in a german synth forum, asking for values.
It was quite impressive for me, how little they needed.
Here are some examples from litlle to big:
Yamaha Reface: 6 watt
Behringer Model D: 7 watt
Waldorf Quantum: 50 watt
Moog Model 15: 130 watt
ooli
50
I‘ll second that with the power consumption of the Mac Mini M1.
On average it uses only 26,5 watts!
Full load: 39 watts.
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There are some good electric vehicles available, but not from the main car vendors.
This is a leightweight carrier system, which allows to mount flexible tops, and has individual cells, so you dont have to change the full block - you change simple modules. Electric batteries have the potential to be recycled to 95% - the system is not in place yet - but it could be in the future.
ooli
52
And what initiative I liked in the last months was this here by AE Modular, who want to make a solar power solution for their modular system 
„The current energy crisis which has been caused by the Ukraine invasion by Russia is coming more and more into focus, especially here in Germany. This has given me even more incentive to work on the solar power/battery module which I talked about in the last blog. It’s not quite finished yet, but here are some photos of a working prototype.“
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Who are the end users/consumers of those companies’ products and services?
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ooli
54
And by the way, the AE modular system can also be powered easily with a power bank, shown in this video by Felix.
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alechko
55
I suppose the correct answer is everyone, but it’s not as simple as that.
as a person and a consumer I can refine my footprint by making more “eco friendly choices”.
industrial entities (plants, factories etc) as consumers don’t make these changes and combined they are responsible for far more pollution then the private sector worldwide.
If they would be forced or maybe given some incentive to make these choices and regulated better towards real changes then there was a different picture of pollution regardless of personal efforts…
sure, personal efforts are still countable and quantifiable, and people should care and be more aware, but so is, and much more, the industrial sector.
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Orest
56
The thing is, the companies are not charged for the environmental costs, which consequentially don’t show in the price of the product. Rather these costs are socialised so the companies can remain globally competitive, which in turn is in the interest of the national economies
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I respectfully disagree with this statement. According to research by the ICCT:
“Only battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles have the potential to achieve the reductions in life-cycle emissions needed to meet the Paris Agreement goals.”
Source: The International Council On Clean Transportation
My counter-advice would be don’t buy a car unless you absolutely have to - but if you do, buy an EV.
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VibKo
58
Exactly. Personal responsibility isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We should all improve our habits an all. But advocating for personal responsibility has definitely been actively used in order to shift focus away from big companies and to some degree political responsibility (depending on the country).
It’s also worth mentioning I think that “the reality” people describe varies a lot depending on where you live.
I can for example not remember a time where all bottles/cans were not recycled. I’m 40. In other places people might still claim this is utopian
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I agree. As individuals we can choose to consume less and - assuming we are living in a democracy - vote for political parties that will hold the industrial sector accountable for their emissions.
enju
60
I think this is a quite bold statement. Actually in many countries you are given a premium by the state if you buy a electric car, the tax is lower and there is less income for the state through taxes on fuel.
So at least in Germany every electric car that is bought instead of a fossil fueled car loses the state money.
And as far as I know all recent studies show that an electric car has a much lower carbon footprint in it’s lifecycle when you don’t put into account strange mathematics with additional power needed by burning coal or something like it. The absurdly higher level of efficiency and the lack of local emissions of petrol or Diesel engines is also a big point that is often neglected. If you would use the gas burned by cars in stationary power stations and use that to charge electric cars you would still get a much better yield.
Indeed I am quite sure that electic cars will be a huge factor in stabilizing the electric grid in the future. For me it was a big mistake that V2G (vehicle to grid) is not mandatory because over time this would build a giant backup for the grid or your house.
I do however follow the criticism of the type of electric cars that are being promoted. We will not make necessary savings if each petrol car is replaced by an even bigger, faster and heavier car. The goal should be to decrease the number of cars while also replacing the remaining cars with sensibly sized electric cars.
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