“Eco-friendly” Products are a SCAM
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- Опубліковано 16 вер 2024
- More than ever products are misleading us into thinking they’re better for us, better for our wallet, or better for the planet than they really are. And we all just want to buy stuff without feeling guilty right?
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Script: Hanna Peter
Editor: Matthew Veal
Project Manager: Lurana McClure Rodríguez
Host: Levi Hildebrand
Want to work with Future Proof? Suggestions? Hate mail? Get in touch with the project manager, Lu: contact@befutureproof.ca
Something that really infuriates me about green washing, companies like Apple. They claim they're taking steps to be eco-friendly/ carbon neutral/ negative but instead of making their products easy to fix and last a long time they're making their products extremely difficult/ impossible to fix.
Louis Rossmann has entered the chat
This was highlighted under the video but I had to scroll way down to find it . Underrated comment.
Apple is so very far from "green" it's insane.
That’s been Apple’s MO since the Mac, and it’s the complete opposite philosophy Wozniak had/has about technology. Look up his quotes about how we’re moving into a rental economy, and can’t actually own or repair any of the tech we have today. He was of the HomeBrew, open to all philosophy.
I went to a talk from ExxonMobil telling ME how eco friendly they are.
Dude had some good tips(I work in chemistry so it actually matters for me) but I couldn't stop eye rolling
Eco friendly label being printed on plastic is peak irony 😭😭
🙃🙃
Flor de Caña rum recently had a bottle in a cardboard box (usually their rum bottles don't have boxes) advertised as "carbon neutral" and "supporting the planting of trees" written on the box. Had they written it on the bottle itself instead of making an elaborate cardboard box to advertise their saving a trees, it would have 100% made more sense.
@@angieakasara i don't know if i should cry because u made me laugh with this comment 😂. But this a sad topic 😭 definitely.
I have seem one chocolate say its super chocolate bar with max protein and vitamins. I was like dude seriously 😐 but suger say it's 60% above on per 100g.
this is one hell of a comment! its blatant, shoved right in front of our faces
stupid Karens don't understand
The fact that recycling is the first thing most people think of as “eco friendly” is part of the problem. The slogan is REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE… in that order! First, reduce the amount of stuff you buy and accumulate. Then reuse packaging and containers, give away clothing, etc. THEN you look to recycle. Recycling was never meant to be the main thing.
I think "Repair" should be added to that slogan.
@@igotesgreat idea!
@@igotes I see Repair as just a step to some Reuse.
Recycle is the one companies focus on most because it's keeping people consuming rather than changing their habits of consumption for the better
rethink, resign, repair, reduce, reuse, with other options gone recycle
As a graphic designer, i’ve seen A LOT of cases where companies print a recycled paper texture on stuff to trick customers.
Your comment should be higher up. THANK YOU!
isnt that be illegal tho? i thought all those badges and textures have to be legally earned before being allowed to apply it
@@organicleaf Making something that "just so happens" to look like recycled product is legally allowed, as long as you don't explicitly claim it is.
Name them !
@@mountain85 i doubt he can do that without being sued by all of them
I can't help but to mention the new "recyclable Keurig pods". The effort to recycle them is so substantial that one would be better off just using a real coffee pot. 😂
Just cold brew, add hot water if necessary.
Problem Solved! 😉👌
Use soft pods & the Senseo coffee maker. Great compost!
fun fact our first big hitter video was all about coffee pods and we still haven't gotten over how dumb they are
@@FutureProofTV Me neither. 🤦♂️🤷♂️
Still love my drip coffee maker. Bonus for buying filters at a warehouse store so I don't overpay for them.
The minimalist trend took it too far. When it comes to sustainability, we should shop like a minimalists, but we don’t have to stage our homes like one. As a lazy person, this middle ground appeals to me because it means I can spend less time shopping and less time throwing things away, while also reducing my environmental impact. Win-win-win!
Agreed! Taking it to an aesthetic level made it seem waaaaay less accessible than it actually is
@@blackmber humans tend to do that, good ideas start out fine and go to far until people start hating them, humans have an unfortunate need to outdo each other and it ends up destroying what they set out to do. Just stop oil, feminism, the LGBTQ are all victims of human egotism.
People don't understand why I ask for gift cards or computer programs instead of more things to clutter or attract dust. I have what I want and need. I'm not minimalist though. I just don't like having things I don't want
@@FutureProofTV why did you include the organic label in this rant the organic label definitely isn’t perfect but it still has some guarantees that are important which is completely different than the rest of that crap you brought up with your jizface
You don't have a minimalist home but if you don't buy much you're going to have a home without much in it
Worked in a grocery store, and the most important thing I learned is to ignore anything on the front of the box with groceries. The front is marketing. The back of a box has all the info you need.
Yap.
Read the ingredients.
@lorenam8028 I worked in the nutrition section for a while and the ingredients in the "healthy" processed food shocked me
Yep, yet at times even back of the box is misleading. oils are triglycerides and they fool us with 0 cholesterol/trans fat label and you can add 0 trans fat label if it's less than a certain amount per serving. so we still unknowingly eat trans fat.
• foodpharma (use subtitles) left his marketing job to share how companies hire intelligent people to make misleading back labels too.
• So deeper (not shallow) personal research + following right channels for awareness,reduce, reuse, donate is helps.
but who has time to read all that small letter info printed on the back ,these companies know it and take it to their advantage ...
@@nawnaw once you start (even if it's hard) n know that most companies do this it's easier to look for those things n learn to sort good from bad ones. It's about getting used to healthy habit formation to avoid future pain & money waste for our own health when it's about healthy food labels too.
• yt channels like foodpharma (use subs) or any other informative channels speed up comprehensive process by breaking down manipulative marketing in health washing too.
Whoever called cheap, shitty faux leather "vegan leather" was a genius
an evil genius
YOU MEAN PLEATHER
PU Leather 👃🏻
Well they’re not wrong 🤷♀️
@@catemcmillian6622it can't be vegan if it damages the environment?
People always forget that the order in Reduce>Reuse>Recycle is important.
I don't care about apple making their phones from recycled materials.
Reusing my old phone is INFINITELY more energy efficient than recycling.
To recycle you need to introduce energy into the system, and to re-manufacture you're introducing even more.
Reusing? Well you introduce 0 if it's still working.
You are so on point! Great! And companies make gadgets' life very short. I could use same computer or mobile phone for years. But they start to die too fast. Also companies make old gadgets become incapable very fast.
this, not a single elecrical device i have ever owned minus ONE has ever been bought new, i always buy second hand everything
I like to replace batteries in my phones. However, i found out, that the replacement is often just as old, as the original battery (meaning its capacity will be deteriorated too) or, what also happens often, the replacement will be fake/counterfeit battery which looks the same/similar to original, but isn´t. Sometimes they don´t even fit into phones they claim to be for!
@@AutumnVulpes369 That's probably less ecological than buying a new electronic device with much improved power efficiency. You end up using a lot more electricity to power old devices than newer ones in almost every case, and you buying that used up device just means that someone else buys the new, more ecological version when they're selling the old, less ecological one to you.
@@Morpheus-pt3wq The battery is the biggest reason phones are so harmful to the environment and buying third-party batteries is worse or as bad as buying a new phone altogether. They are made to break faster than brand ones so you have to buy them more often and the companies making them care even less about the environment than companies making the phones. You can also be sure that you're supporting child slave labor anytime you buy a phone battery, but that's pretty much the same thing whether it's from Apple or some nameless sweatshop.
There's a wide gap between 'minimalism', rejecting fads and trends, and dont-buy-crap-you-dont-need
Yes that's called being frugal
@Mikey-od1xd not a known concept to generations who have been so bathed in marketing from birth, that they can't see it anymore
I tried that trend and suddenly i looked poor, because most of the things i need are necessary to present myself to society! But truthfully in my perpective im just a caveman!
Yes, just using a little common sense when buying products, shopping habits and lifestyle.
@@Mikey-od1xd re: minimalism vs. frugality: The Tik-Tok generation loves to invent grandiose terms for age-old concepts and pretend they've invented something new.
I hate how everything is plastic, even most of the products that appear to be plastic-free. For example, virtually all glass jars with metal lids contain plastic in the lid. If you search for cotton clothes, most of them will be a mixture of cotton and plastic. I'd kill for an accurate "plastic-free" search term we can toggle on at places like Amazon.
@@MarthaM4858 I care about safety, noise and sound pollution, and city planning as well. I sold my car in 2018, and since then I mostly walk or use an e-scooter. Cars are overall bad and I'm doing my part to help improve things.
@@MarthaM4858 You are saying that anything less than perfection is worthless? It's true we cannot be 100% plastic-free, but anything you can do to reduce it helps both health and the environment. Generally speaking, you have to deal with some plastic when it comes to food, electronics, and health / safety products, but that leaves a lot of areas where it's possible to be pretty much plastic-free. And even within those exceptions, there might be some small things you can do to reduce plastic, such as buying a kitchen appliance with more stainless steel over plastic, or forgoing the modern electronic kitchen appliance altogether and using a plastic-free traditional method.
I care about the truth and doing what's best. I am always learning and improving and I will do my best, and despite perfection being impossible, I can at least get as close as I can, and hope others do the same. I've only learned about plastic being bad recently, and so there are still many areas in my life that have room for improvement. I will do the best I can to improve them over time within my budget and ability.
By the way, my sunglasses are only plastic in the lens. The frame is carbon fiber and the nose pads are silicone. I have plans to eventually swap out the plastic case for a leather one, but it's expensive. Don't let perfection stop you from being the best person you can be.
Being allergic to synethetic materials really sucks when I go shopping, sometimes i'll buy all cotton clothes and they still make a tag on it out of plastic fabric.
Took me 4 years to finally find an affordable all-cotton suite for my bed, spent years getting massive eczema reactions to the synthetic plastic crap.
@@Midori_Hoshi Ironically humanity did ok without plastics until after WWII
@@uweschroeder Right. I'd argue the majority of products that changed from being plastic-free to made of plastic around the 1950s are overall lower quality now. Plastic has only taken over because it's cheaper. It's not actually better quality-wise. But if your customers are dumb and / or poor, you can probably make more money selling to them with cheap shitty plastic products, so that's what happens.
They tried selling plastic bottle in Germany 🇩🇪 all the citizens would recycle ♻️ those bottles because they wanted their money back and they sent those plastic bottles back to the companies so they can recycle them, the problem was it was cost companies too much money to recycle those bottles in the plant and so now the companies switched back to glass bottles and closed those plastic recycling plants.
I love the reusable glass bottles in Germany. It's so much nicer. We used to have that in Sweden too but they are almost all gone now...
One of the worst greenwashing offenders is the company that made that laptop on your left. They purposefully go out of their way to make their products non-serviceable and have been actively lobbying against the right to repair making sure that the only alternative to a problem with your device is its complete or near-complete replacement. The environmental impact of a single of their devices easily dwarves all toothpaste tubes and toothbrushes a family will use over a couple of generations.
They do tend to last a long time though. My iPhone 6s lasted me 6 years
Angry apple sheeps incoming. 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑
I prefer apple but don’t like their corporate philosophy. So I only buy or beg second hand devices.
Every iPhone user I know has a broken phone rattling around in a drawer so I’ll get it fixed and play with the cool kids.
I comfort myself with the knowledge that steve Jobs had treatable cancer but went the vegan/weirdo route and neeedlessly died early.
@@user-hm5zb1qn6g pancreatic cancer is among the most lethal cancers if it isn’t the most lethal cancer
As a Biochemical engineer, we are in such a dire situation. Like the fact that people dont know the difference between the resin symbols and think it means recyclable is so dangerous.
agreed!
it was specifically designed to get confused with it. it's pure evil.
@@DANKKrish I wouldn't be surprised at this point.
... and even the 'recyclable' stuff ISNT actually recycled. Separating your trash is NOT recycling
How well propaganda works is depressing.
Funny enough, my environmental science degree made me cynical and it caused me to stop recycling. If you buy a product, do it to improve your immediate environment, don't do it thinking you're saving the planet. I've called this "don't poop where you eat" environmentalism.
Don't give up completely! The trick is to figure out whether someone will make money if a material is recycled. If the recycler will make money off it it will be recycled.
Ummm reduce reuse recycle still the things right? Recycle is the last least important thing in the chain if events right? But perhaps you are cynical about all steps
@@sevenofzach part of the problem with recycling is that it increases the amount of microplastics
@@dismurrart6648 ok so how does that respond to their focus on recycling struggles or my comment about ignoring the more important reduce and reuse priorities?
@@sevenofzach they said they stopped recycling. I was explaining one of the reasons they might have
Main infuriation to me is how these corporations made reusing/recycling their products’ trash/leftovers the consumers’ problem in the first place…WITHOUT having to leave any other options for said products. Example: My dad remembered when all he and his family had to do was use the milk they paid for, maybe rinse the bottle out, then stick the empty bottles back out on the step, and the milk man/company he worked for did the rest. If you lost a bottle or broke one, that was ok, you could get another one on the next round if you wanted. They had the option to buy milk in other packaging, but preferred the glass bottles. So, why won’t corporations do this now, other than because GREED?
I remember my local grocery store used to keep large canisters of milk, you bring your own milk containers and only pay for how much milk you buy. You pay a small fee extra for a new container if you forgot.
Unfortunately that store was replaced by another chain grocery store who now only sells milk in plastic bottles.
there used to be a small store near where i lived that sold cheese and milk, and people would bring their own bottles to be filled. everything was more natural, simpler, and more human. im not sure what is in place of that store now, but i have not seen this practice in a long time
Yup...especially for food items we should push for reusable containers and a delivery/order system where customers can order their weekly groceries in advance, so food doesn't need to sit on shelves waiting to be bought and being thrown out. I wonder how much meat and produce and cooked food gets thrown out because it was never purchased. It would make more sense for people to be able to order in advance what they want and the grocery can better purchase based on actual demand.
Because $$
It's not greed. People pay for convinience. Lugging a gallon of milk to your car every time you want a gallon sounds less convinient than getting it hand delivered to your doorstep, but it's long term convinience in exchange for short term inconvinience, and you're there for food anyways.
You don't have to worry about a milk bill or keeping track of bottles to bring back to the store, and you don't have to worry about breaking them. Society would be better if we still used glass bottles, but milk carriers would still be around if people still paid them, they weren't slain on the street by the evil corpo capitalism boogeyman.
So true. Eco labels tell us nothing about the true sustainability of the products.
And it’s becoming harder and harder as a consumer to understand what to look for.
They need to set actual laws for eco labels. Like if you say something is bio-degradable it should be able to degrade in nature within a certain time limit, and not just sometime in the distant future. And should not require artificial processing to degrade either.
I remember one day at my dads house, i asked him why he didn’t have a recycling bin. He said recycling was a scam that was way too inefficient and used too much energy, and that most of it just got thrown out anyway.
As much as i dont want to believe him...... he had a point
I have a friend who lives in a smaller municipality nearby, she wanted to recycle but the municipality stopped recycling entirely because nobody cared or tried. I'm so tired
I meaaaan not sure just not owning a recycling bin at all is the solution here either but we love an informed man 😅😅
we pay for recycling but if the truck never come and then you get fined for putting out 'trash' on the wrong day. when we first moved my mom fought them for a month to get the recycling to come. the week following the singular appearance everyone had their recycling out. the truck did not come a second time. everyone got fined for leaving 'trash' out on the wrong day again
It's just an extra bin (trashcan). I know it all goes to landfill but at least it gets emptied once a week. All part of the nonsense we have to deal with in the 21st century.
I have a similar situation with my partner, who insists on putting plastic in the recycle bin. Even aluminum is rarely recycled, it's too cheap to just fabricate more.
Problem is those paper container substitutes were coated in PFAS to make them plastic like in their water repellent property, ends up being even worse likely. Not only poisoning the environment producing these chemicals and containers but also poisoning the consumer of product contained within
Yeah...and thats why glass and metal are most eco-friendly materials, after wood (before it get soaked in all these chemicals to make it look better and last longer).
"Eco friendly" is to use old stuff that are made to last.
Many decades ago...a friend who had a summer job in a Midwestern canning factory told me that after green beans were canned one large Lot was labeled "Libby's green beans" and the next Lot was labeled "Generic green beans" at half the shelf cost of the Libby's brand.
Can we say: "SUCKER!!!"
I'm tired of polyester clothing being called "eco-friendly."
Even pizza boxes- Dominos prints their boxes with a "recycle this box!" on them, but my city does not take used pizza boxes in recyce because of the oils. We can put them into the green bins, but i dont think thats well known.
I tear off the top half
That's the kind of stuff you can improve with legislation, in the EU packages have to print the information needed to put your trash in the good bin.
There is actually a start-up called 'singular care' that sells stainless steel toothbrushes with silicone heads, which can be easily taken off and then attach a new one. The heads are made from 1 material only, so they can be recycled easily.
It must me expensive
@@sabrinabrito8473 Yep. They'll stay in business until some bigger company wants to use their idea, buys them out, and then changes the formula or does away with the product entirely because they just wanted to eliminate a competitor. Happens all the time in the tech world.
Hi! I can only speak from US and Australia perspective because that’s what I’ve worked in but most recyclers won’t recycle plastics that are that small. There is alot of products that technically can be recycled but our current systems have no way of recycling them and are not moving to include. Unless the company has their own collection points but normally in those cases it means for the majority of people they won’t have access which is then still considered non recyclable.
too bad it's not electric
A toothbrush is the least of my plastic use. Most of it comes from just packaging on daily goods.
back in my days the toothpaste was in a metal container, the bread was sold without any wraps, milk was sold in re-used Fanta bottles and the water was bottled in glass bottles which we had to return to be able to buy more water.
And the polio was gmo-free!
The easiest way to be eco friendly, is to not buy anything, pretend you’re broke.
You also save money in the process, it's a win-win
The funny thing is, poor countries are more sustainable in their practices because they can't afford to throw away everything, so visiting my family in Latin America, they had returnable beer bottles because it is cheaper to get those returned and recycle them, even plastic Coke bottles existed thst were recycled for this very reason.
You make me feel so good about my 15 year old t-shirts and commuting by bus lol
When I worked at a restaurant, the garbage bin for customers had two slots - one for garbage, the other for recycling. Well, when it came time to throw those bags out, they both went into the same dumpster. Sad but true.
I try to do better, like I've been using filtered water bottles since 2017 instead of pre-bottled water, and I have mesh bags to bring to the store for fruits and vegetables instead of the plastic ones provided. It should be so much easier to not have to throw everything in the landfill. 😮💨
They did this at my job too, I was so annoyed when I found out
I worked in an office and unfortunately all we had were trash bins and no recycling when office handle alot of printing paper and shredded documents. It was so sad to see a system isnt in place for better recycling. It should be mandatory for office suits
I've seen places that try to go above and beyond touting their environmental friendliness by having the thing where you put those plastic bag wrappers (like chip bags) in and they mail it off to recycle (this in itself is a scam), then right next to it they have regular garbage and recycling for plastic and aluminum cans. When the janitor emptied it even the aluminum cans ended up in the garbage. The one thing that could ACTUALLY be usefully recycled wasn't, but they sure want you to think it was.
I think it's a bit nuanced..
If there is rotten food thrown into the recycling bin, or containers that can't actually be recycled... Sometimes it's genuinely just not worth trying to sort.
I have never understood why people don't make an effort for cans though ... It's a no brainier environmental and economic win
I never even bought mesh bags. I just don't throw away the plastic bags in which I get my groceries. I keep them in my reusable grocery bag, and reuse them every time I need to buy produce. (Well, most of the time. I'm trying.)
I think one of the worst offenders are those "refill bottle-bags" (they usually contain soap). Most of them are made with different kinds of plastic in the same package, so they are not recyclable or it is very difficult to do it. I've found that only a small number of brands uses the "monomaterial" kind that can effectively be recycled.
So yes... the refill uses less (but non recyclable) plastic than the original bottle that is usually made of PET, the most recyled plastic. They obviusly write about the "less plastic" part only
Another greenwashing are the little refillable ink containers for pens. Still plastic. Most recyclers don't collect little pieces like that to recycle.
Another greenwashing is thinner plastic which breaks to pieces easily and won't be picked by workers to be recycled. They're not labelled with which type of plastic they are too.
We can go on with all the greenwashing that happens.
@@user-gu9yq5sj7c I have never seen the refillable pens market themselves as environmentally friendly. I have always seen it as a coat saving or the person is just really into stationary and has those expensive pens that only take refills.
this is also a good time to talk about how plastic film/wrap & bags aren't recycled bc they stuck in the machinery!
I just want both refilling station for certain products like liquid soap and sturdy containers that last my lifetime so I can reuse them for their intended purpose without worry.
Depending on where you live, look around for a bring your own container store! They're not particularly common in the US unfortunately, but I've found them in a lot of major cities.
Your comment was so good, a stupid bot copied it. Sorry lol
If you're looking for glass containers, stop by your local thrift store! They always have a ton of glass including mason jars
I deon't remember the name but there is a company selling detergents in pills so you don't need to change the bottle.
I remember trying out a company years ago that was just starting out in the UK called Loop. They would deliver your food and other stuff in a big bag with reusable containers (metal tins, glass bottles etc.) that you’d send back so they could wash them. They’d teamed up with a few big brands and also had their own products. The issue was that their product range was small and things were more expensive than buying it normally. The containers also still used plastic seals and labels (I think as it was required). And the hassle of sending back the empty containers to get your deposit back was annoying. They seemed to team up with Tesco so they could have a section in the shop for you to refill but I haven’t seen it in my local one or seen much from them at all.
I don’t know if things have improved since they started out but until they make it an affordable options that is convenient then why would people opt for it?
The thing about recycling plastic bottles, is that it's actually very easily doable. Finland has been doing it for decades (and the EU-wide system in place now is actually a big step down from the older Finnish version of "make sturdy plastic bottles, wash/disinfect them between uses until they get too ratty looking" to the new "make thin bottles and shred and remould them every time"). How? Every bottle is wort 10/15/25 cents if you return it with the barcode intact. Even if you personally can't be bothered, someone will. If America hasn't caught up, it's not because they can't, it's because they don't want to.
Hahahha talk about green washing. Sturdier "reusable" plastic makes no difference. in fact its worse because you think its better while its making you sick.
This is the channel I've wanted to see for such a long time. No nonsense and cuts through the 💩
I feel guilty every time I am throwing plastic into the recycling bin knowing that it is not likely that it is recycled. I have seen people would throw pretty much anything in the recycling bin, headphones, dirty pizza boxes... I minimalist lifestyle don't suit me but I can spend time sorting/separating/cleaning all my recycles. Knowing my hard work will be mixed with contaminated recycles and quite sure that it is going to be rejected and send to landfill is so awful to think of.
That is why here they just burn it for energy, our heating season last like 9 months so it atleast gives heat/electricity from the plastic and it doesn't end up in landfill or worse in 3rd world country. It is not perfect, but I rather take the destroying of plastic completely and take the greenhouse "hit" than see it accumulating more in food and water.
People want labels like eco friendly, green, biological, etc. etc. because they "don't want to feel bad about it." And THAT is the issue. Don't feel bad about buying something, then this litterally ALL goes away. Buy something you want/need, or don't buy it. That's litrally the only thing you *should* care about. (and ofc. the price of the product). Showing weakness / feeling bad about something will always be something corporations can (and will) exploit.
I partly disagree, because some products people actually need, like food and hygiene products and once in a while new clothes and shoes (but not nearly as often as some people buy them). Reality of modern society is most people NEED to buy new stuff almost constantly, and over-consumerism only comes on top of that. People should be able to know WHAT to buy, but also be conscious of how much and often
I'm so sick of all these tricks. I tried to be eco friendly and then I find out this and that is a scam. Can you do a video on products that say they are not tested on animals and let us know if at least that is true. I am not going to feel guilty buying products anymore. Too confusing!
I recommend both Blueland products and Nature Bee (canadian owned and operated!). Blueland is B corp and leaping bunny certified and I've been using their products for years now. Nature Bee also has a collection of similar products which I use as well.
Levi/Future Proof, would your team be able to make a video about either of these companies? Highlight the good ones. :)
Hope you're ready for more disappointment. Most cosmetic ingredients have been tested on animals while they were first being developed. If a company then uses those chemicals inside of a new product, but don't test that product on animals, it's considered "cruelty free". Also, the product can contain animal based ingredients, while still being called cruelty free, so long as there's no animal testing.
The loose definition of cruelty free can lead to all sorts of manipulative marketing. A huge company like L'Oreal can setup a shell company that tests new chemicals on animals all day, sell those chemicals back to L'Oreal, then they make a product with them which isn't tested on animals and slap a cruelty free sticker on it.
It all gets manufactured in the same factories!
You would rather buy products tested on humans? Or not tested at all?
@@zwerko How about traditional products and ingredients that have been around for thousands of years? What's with all this new products every few months? Natural skin care and cosmetics, cleaning stuff and medicine that's worked for millenia not good enough???
Moderation and not feeding over consumption is the key. You can't create waste if you don't buy anything.
The wealth in the US is based on consumption and exploitation. Don't tell people to stop consuming...
@@uweschroeder
MODERATION AND NOT FEEDING INTO OVER CONSUMPTION IS THE KEY
But people still need to buy things all the time to just cover basic needs like food and the exeptation of hygiene. We need clothes, but not new ones nearly as often as many people buy today. In modern society, electronics like phone or computer may be needed for a lot of things as well, including work. Maybe some people can live off the land (and even that may have a starting cost), but even that is not available for everyone and were too many people to live in the old way. Buying is simply not avoidable, so people want to know what to buy when they will. Yes people should limit the unnecesary consumption at the same time
@@zakosist
Did you actually think about what my comment meant or only how it made you feel?
@@vvitch-mist20 yes I thought about what it meant. Just that its not the solution alone, just the neccesary buys create tons of waste and people actually need answers on what to buy, as well as companies themself changing their practices. The statement about not buying/not creating waste is just so far removed from modern reality it only gets stupid
Oh, i was like, "I thought we did bottled water/Dasani." lol
haha just one of many examples of this phenomenon unfortunately 😕
Plastic is used for everything. No matter what it is, like why can't i just use a paper bag for fruits and vegetables? Why do all the soap refills come in plastic? Plastic packing for a drink. Plastic packing for a plastic item. Plastic cover for cardboard box. Plastic sleve for shoe boxes and plastic everywhere. Companies are to blame. They have more than enough money to use other methods, but they use plastic because it is cheap. When my dad was young they used glass bottles why can't our generation simply do that?
not even joking i JUST got fooled by this just this morning-queue me, this morning on a long walk, forgot my water bottle. go to cvs and i decide to get a disposable one because im dying. i choose “just water” because it’s a box, looks cooler, and the marketing got me. 😞
Stop falling for the propaganda dude. Just buy what you want without guilt, but remember you ain't helping shit when it comes to being environmentally conscious.
@@jayl5032this is the kind of thought that has brought us here. It’s not propaganda, climate change exists.
We don’t have to feel guilty but we all need to reduce our consumption.
@@jayl5032 i don’t feel guilty i feel silly because the marketing got me. no need to explain things i already know :) the average consumer isn’t at fault for the state of the world.
That’s not true! You can help by reusing things like bottles, bags and cooking your own meals instead of prepackaged. Many tiny insignificant snowflake's make an avalanche.
How is that bad? In this case, you needed the water. Sure, it still a plastic bottle, but it's not like you doomed the planet by forgetting your water bottle one time.
While not the ultimate solution, far from it, I do want to emphasize that the single-digit-percentage plastics recycling rate isn't true everywhere. Germany recycles quite a bit of its plastics. Of course, there are catches there as well, and no plastics wins most of the time. But it seems this is particularly bad in North America.
thanks for sharing! Yeah our audience is mostly from US/Canada so a lot of our stats skew towards that dem, but important to note this isn't the case everywhere 👍
It is utterly unsurprising to me that it would be especially bad in North America considering just about everything else is too
DW Planet A channel (on youtube) has a documentary that would contradict you, it shows how recycling works in Germany. Not sure I'm allowed to paste links here so search for 'The recycling myth: What actually happens to our plastic'
What about FUTURE non-petroleum based “plastics”?
Which may not be true. Germany separates a lot of plastics but ultimately runs garbage fired power plants... Actually when I try to find decent numbers, between 40% and 70% depending on who you ask is burned.
I agree completely, the solution for us having smaller footprint, is by us using reusable containers. Imagine that for any product you use, you could just fill it in a durable container that you can be used hundreds if not thousands of times and the products will be delivered in large reusable containers from the factory to refill in supermarkets. you would be able to significantly reduce the amount of waste you make. But companies would prefer selling us the products in disposable containers, it's logistically simpler for them.
This type of green labeling makes me indescribably angry.
What's even worse about the whole "compostable" term is that many of these products are... Companies just don't mention that it has to be done in a commercial facility that does much higher temperature composting than the average person has access to, and most municipalities don't even have facilities for (just look at all the "good for the environment" claims PLA filament has - it requires something like 55-58C to actually start breaking down properly)
i remember when our local store started using "compostable" plastic bsgs. i laughed and told the store owner they were just made of corn starch mixed with micro plastics. degradable does not necessarily mean compostable.
I think you should buy always the products no one a making an advertisement for. For cleaning for example it's vinegar, baking soda, citric acid and so on. It's cheap, it's sustainable and no ad is needed
this is a great tip!
Yup, classic 'old school' cleaning. 100% agree 👍. Vinegar and lemon juice etc makes excellent cleaning liquid that's free from chemicals and fake fragrance etc, but the stores are full of antibacterial chemical eco disasters..
Vinegar is the most underused household product. It kills bacteries, smells, it de-scales. You can use it wash your clothes, clean every single surface in your bathroom and kitchen and when you are done you can also put it on a salad and eat it. Also it is 100% natural and does not harm the enviroment, fucking love the thing.
u can also buy detergent in a concentrated form where u a single bottle lasts u many years and u just pour a bit of it to another bottle, add water and ur good
Haven't watched the video yet, but I saw the thumbnail and came to say this. For a while I bought the bamboo toothbrushes and really enjoyed them. When they wore out, I removed the bristles and cut off the top then carved them into crochet hooks. I doubt many other people did so.
I’m practicing to turn mine into nalbinding needles!
@@nightfall3605 that's really cool! nalbinding seems so hard, but so fascinating
@@tygerinthenight3255 Oh, I’m not using them! I’m sticking to crochet! There is a significant Viking interest in my area and I plan to donate them to the reenactors. I saw a video of an archaeologist who showed how to use the bamboo handle.
Do you have any problems with splintering when carving the hook?
Its actually a pretty good piece of wood to carve. They're dense and not very splintery at all. I do the rough shaping with a pocket knife and then use a nail file to smooth it. Then I use a nail buffer, one of those that make your fingernails really shiny, to polish off any spots that catch. It helps to rub it over some cloth and feel for any rough spots.
I'm trying to be eco-friendly by avoiding plastic as much as possible. I ditched my truck seven months ago and have been biking since. Glass containers for the bulk section at my local coop, plastic free cleaning supplies. Yes, I do use bamboo products, but I try to read up on the products (and companies) before buying them to at least tangentially verify it's environmentally friendly.
You do realize that 95% of Americans do not live in an area where biking is a viable means of transportation. And 99% of Americans do not have a "local coop"?
@@lisaboban lol if you're gonna pull numbers out of your ass you might wanna make it more believable. I might have believed 50%. And that's including people who are too young, old, or physically handicapped and can't.
@@lisabobanthey're not saying everyone should do what they're doing. They're just sharing what's working for them. What's the issue with that?
@@amandamacabre Nothing wrong with that. But it is a bit of "humble bragging ". None of those options are viable solutions for the vast majority of people.
Isn’t your bike made of plastic? At least partially?
While a lot of the modern "environmentally friendly" stuff is just marketing, it's important to still strive to do what you can to support the environment.
Too many people just say "green is just marketing who cares". But it's important to be an educated consumer and know how to sort out the hype
As a biologist and a consumer rights advocate (including being well informed) I'm hyper aware of all of this, and I just wanted to say thinks for sharing this info. Green washing is a huge problem, and there's almost no regulation that punishes it.
Speaking of recycling, i once used HP printer and when cartridge life was close to end HP emailed me about "recycle program". Guess that, on opening ling provided its turned out program "unavailable in my country", but HP continued to remind me about recycling...main goal was to make you feel responsible, not to actually recycle anything.
7:25 speaking of laws put into effect to reduce plastic waste, the city of Austin made the grocery stores use reusable plastic bags. most people forget so they have to buy new bags every time. Im guessing this has actually increased plastic usage because im guessing one of those bags might have 10 times more plastic than the regular ones.
they're doing that here in canada also. me, i'm still reusing plastic bags from before i moved here, 30 yrs ago
Hank Green did a Scishow on this
Make it a bit more expensive and people will remember, most of the time since it has actual impact for them. May also help with some signs to remind them. What made me finally learn to bring my own bag in the beginning was never throwing a plastic bag out (unless it was full of other garbage thats not other plastic bags) and seeing it accumulate. My dad didnt care about how many plastic bags he used before they started to cost slightly more (and still pretty cheap per bag, just not basically free) and now uses a reusable bag about all the time. People may forget once in a while, but consequenses makes people remember
Some company just print a rough cardboard texture on shiny withe cardboard.
They don't care, the only thing they care about is what gives a positive perception of a product at first glance.
I used to be a strict/extremist vegan for 15 years. Honestly, biggest Greenwashing there is.
We focus way too much on the individual than systematic change.
There are many reasons to go vegan. My channel has links to evidence and details
I’m so over this recycling process. Yes this is, no this isn’t… brother
I worked for a large pharmacy chain where we had one trash compactor and one cardboard container. Great. Until we see the same truck dump both!!
Where we live we need a dumpster. I’ve asked 1200 times about getting a recycling container, uh no. We don’t do that. But on their website, they tell the new customers about their recycling programs!
Lmao. I work in the waste sector. There are things called "split trucks." Recycling and trash can go into different compartments in the same truck. Waste hauling companies make money off their recycling and lose money on collecting trash, so it's very unlikely your waste hauler is putting them all into one truck just to send it all to landfill. It doesn't make financial sense.
Don't ask your property owner for a recycling bin. Depending on where you live, it's required by your city or state. Ask your City waste staff for help getting a recycling bin instead.
@@starfire139 hey thank you. We live on a mountain with a 19 degree incline up to the home. So we have Republic service and they provide a 4 yard dumpster.
They told me that there was a big recycling facility in Knoxville (we live up near Bristol) and that they used to send all the recycling there. However, they claim it closed and that they no longer have a recycling facility. Any help is appreciated
The best way to be eco friendly is to not invent the product
crazy how you still throw away bottles. in germany we have pfand system where you leave a 25 cent deposit at the store per bottle, that you get back when you return the bottle. no mixed plastics -> can be recycled
and the bio label, i thought that was your organic, meaning no pesticides, gene manipulation and the highest level of animal wellbeing
we had deposit on bottles in canada before the 60s.
@@vulcanfelinethat's 60 years ago... 😂 an entire generation or two.
just had a beer brought over from Germany, it didn't have any indication of a deposit
It's a shame that the US government hasn't gotten around to introducing laws and agencies for these things, but it's also not that surprising considering they also don't have anywhere near as strict rules about the labels that tell you what's in a product. Maybe they'll catch up to European basic consumer protection standards some day. Hopefully our standards have also improved even more by then.
@@defeqel6537 should say "mehrweg" on the back of the bottle
hope you don't mind me suggesting, but do you think you could ever do a video on products made with toxic materials? plastic is definitely not that safe (like microwave lids) but i feel like there's so much stuff made with pvc and PFAs, and i feel like people should know. thanks for making these cool videos! they feel quite validating and teach me a lot :)
Makeup has a sht ton of it especially nail polish, recently the discovery of a harmful chemical in all tampons too.
Watch Plant Chompers on pfas. 97 percent of Americans have pfas in their blood.
@@SemekiIzuio exactly!! i've learned so many products i regularly use have toxic ingredients and it bums me out so much. i still think it's worth worrying about but i'm kinda tired of finding out about this stuff. makes me wonder why there isn't enough oversight
@@umikanata they say gen z is aging faster than millennials and this is probably why, because they put unnecessary stuff on their faces and remove it with same said bad chemicals for it. 🙄 very redundant. There aint nothing wrong with wearing make up but people don't use the good kind and flock towards cutsie stuff instead of looking at what they are buying.
@@SemekiIzuio Ah yes, everything is so so bad now. Not like in the old days when we used the pure stuff. You just can't beat some good old fashioned Radium and lead for keeping your complexion nice and clear. No chance of aging much with that. They should bring it back. It's nanny state health & safety gone mad I tell you!
The easiest way to be a minimalist is with one's 4th or 5th house, preferably a tiny home only accessible by heli or seaplane for additional clout!
There's also a possibility that people with small homes toss out more stuff to declutter. Then rebuy them. We need a system change.
Watch Second Thought, Andrewism on the library of all things, DW Planet A, Our Changing Climate, Not Just Bikes, Flurfdesign, and NHK Japan Zero Waste.
People forget the three Rs; it's reduce, reuse, and THEN recycle. Recycling matters less and less as your bin size get smaller. Pro tip: buy a smaller recycling/garbage bin and you'll waste less because of the inevitable overflow
Abit of an off tangent but it's related to this:
As someone in Europe that wants to recycle by seperating my trash and such... WHY IS IT SO HARD?!
Heck if I pay for disposable things I pay 15 cents tax.. but we got another bottle that costs 1 euro more but if you return it to the store you get it back.
So now I have 5 trash bags.
1 for anything that can only be disposed.
1 for paper (but not all paper/cardboard especially those with grease stains)
1 for plastics so they can go to the recycle centers (but not all plastics)
1 for left overs and bio waste (That one smells bad)
1 for recyclables to get my extra euro back when I go shopping.
Ooh wait.. make 6 for GLASS.
So then we gotta get rid of them. 3 of them have their own garbage container wich the garbage man picks up. NEAT!
The other 3... I gotta go outta my way. 1 is at super markets so I don't care. It's on the way and I get money back. (Unless those machines break down for the UNTH time.)
The other 2... are way outta my way... and most of the time are overfull.. so I gotta find another one.. wich is overfull.. so I find another one.. wich is overfull...
Sorry add 7 bags now cause clothes recycling. Cause they want me to seperate those too. Wich has another location...futher away from my home..
And all since these eco friendly labels and recycling do matter. Heck Fast food joints also use the Pay 1 euro extra for the reusuable cup and return it to get it back.. but those machines break so often and employees go: "Yea it's another company sorry" Also they get stolen a lot since they can be washed and reused.. so who cares? It's like a good plastic cup for a dollar.
So now you can't take them out.. and make sure your order has those cups or else that euro is gone...
It's already bad enough that I know a lot of eco-friendly products cannot actually be recycled. But it's worst when you realize the options are there to be perfectly ecofriendly.. but.. do you really want to keep checking everything you throw in the trash so you can bring it away somewhere else? Especially true with recyclable plastics... wich some can just be thrown with the regular trash and the rest with the recyclable trash.....
Which country?
@@TabeaSerenety Netherlands
@@kotlolishthanks, i'm from Germany and it sounded familar. We have garbage Container for non recycel, plastic and cans, paper, Glas and organic waste in front of our Appartment buildings. Decades ago Glass Container were still somewhere in your neighborhood and we had to walk or Drive there. Nearby grocery store takes the bottles back and batteries. Clothing Containers are now rare, they were often filled with garbage. So either ends in regular garbage or a second Hand Shop.
Stop voting in progressive leftists every time.
I work in an industry that does a lot of greenwashing. My favorite are the companies that offer to recycle products after the end user pays to ship the product back to the factory. The manufacturers know that the price of returning the product is prohibitive, so they’re not in any danger of anyone returning it for recycling. 🤦🏻♀️😂
The best recycling you can do is to use a metal cup for everything you want to drink, and use things made to last. That's it. Minimalism means nothing if a) you don't want to use the darned thing and b) in using the darned thing, it breaks apart. Just buy things made to last. Buy older things. _Buy articles which had an expiration date on them._ And buy footwear made to last considerably longer than what you may use it for. Spend a bit more to get a lot more mileage. Y'know, all that neat stuff.
Then you spend more to get more mileage on a brand or product for years only for it to be acquired then rapidly shitified in the space of a couple of years.
@@Thatguy-cb4qs Well, that is why I brought up the expiration date bit. Depression-era furniture in America _did_ have an expiry on it. Not because the materials would go sour then, but because it was an economy-stimulating ploy which ushered in planned obsolescence.
@@bluephreakr certainly. A lot of expiry dates are bullshit.
I learned that there's like 5 major companies making all the dog and cat food 😮
10 companies make like 98% of our processed foods. All owned by the same investment firms.
Nestle Unilever and who else?
MARS makes all the chocolates.
Own. Not make. There's a difference. They're conglomerates and corporations who bought over other brands for monetary reasons but otherwise do not get involved much or interfere with how the original owners operate. Mostly it would be top down instructions to make more profits by streamlining ops/processes, or changing ingredients etc. But they don't "make" the item itself.
Plot twist: the "green" marketing isn't about the environment, it's about all the money these corporations are raking in at our expense
Yep, if they just come out with a "green" line/product but don't change the main products AS WELL then 🤦♀️
Green= money; got it
The macbook sitting on the table during this anti capitalist rant is just *chefs kiss
"You criticise society yet you participate in it. I am very smart"
If you want to clean your house more sustainably, chances are you already have (almost) all the products you’ll need to get the job done: Castile soap, baking soda, distilled white vinegar, lemon juice, isopropyl alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, oxi clean, and some essential oils (optional)
Don't forget chlorine bleach. That stuff works like magic and costs next to nothing.
A great way to curb consumption is to cancel Amazon Prime.
God forbid people have to leave their couch. People brag about how many packages they get from Amazon daily.
Dont even have amazon in my country lol
I read a book about greenwashing this year and it's so infuriating that these companies causing so much pollution try to make people believe that they're doing a good job
Stop. Buying. Crap. That's the eco friendly way.
Stop living is even better for our planet 🌎
The overwhelming amount of things people buy are needed. Until you find time to produce everything you need, that will stay the same. I fill up my bins without buying new stuff that's not just food and basic stuff.
No, do it like everyone else: buy crap in China with free shipping. That produces the pollution elsewhere and is thus clean (here). /s
There is a reason why California imports a lot of oil from Ecuador - produced in the Amazon without many environmental regulations is so much cleaner than producing it in California - or so Newsom wants to sell the people and most actually believe it and buy EVs which are based on a very similar lie. I don't call them "zero emission vehicles", I call them "zero emission here vehicles" and that's much closer to the truth.
@@Quincy_010_ Yes, but not a practical solution on the individual level.
@@MichaelDavis-mk4me If you fill your bin with stuff you buy itäs quite obvious that you don't need to buy that stuff.
My husband watching this video: *pacing back and forth in front of the TV* "See? This is what I'm talking about. This is what I keep saying and people call me crazy". He cracked me up 😂😂😂
If you want to talk about greenwashing, you should mention the company who made that laptop you show off in every video, who have made their expensive products virtually impossible to repair and only started doing so in a very limited way because they're being legally forced to. Yet they have an entire section of their web site dedicated to bragging about how environmentally conscious they are.
so what's the "eco-friendly" laptop we should be buying? Should we stop using computers? -_-
@@juliana_f_c Buy one that's repairable and upgradeable. There are many of them.
He means Apple in particular.
@@krisztianpovazson4535 what about the rest? Surely hp, dell, lenovo are all as bad environmentally
@@juliana_f_c No one is denying that other companies are as bad. The OP is only singling them out is because the Apple laptop in the video, it's right there sitting on the table.
We went from Washington to Texas for the eclipse. I had a running box and bag for cans/bottles and paper products. Hauled it all the way home and recycled there.
Still blows my mind to see people blithely your an aluminum can or cardboard box. I'm a bit extreme in my recycling (flew home with some from Florida once), but come on!!! At least paper and aluminum! jfc
The "recyclable" label means nothing else than "it sounds like we are ecological but 100% rely on others to do it".
And we in Europe can only do so much, while other countries still use single use plastics and throw them in landfills.
Thanks to paper straws it literally leaves a bad taste in the mouth. 😑
Even most of the supposed recycling in Europe just ends up in a landfill or being sold to the third world. The German public news channel, DW or whatever it's called, didn't investigation and found out that's like 5% actually getting recycled. There have been numerous similar investigations in the US and other places, and most of it is a scam.
Most of Europe still doesn't have a deposit system for bottles and cans; there is loads more that could be done
Just because the two products are made by the same company doesn't mean one isn't more eco-friendly. I tried to find the video just to confirm there wasn't some other factor not mentioned in this video but I wasn't able to find it.
And that hope that, “Maybe this company is one of the good ones,” or, “I think this industry has the proper oversight but maybe it’s that other similar sector I heard about,” is what keeps the marketing effort afloat.
(Like plastic in the ocean. Just a bunch of dirty ideas that take more effort to remove than to put in place)
In my company many of the staff use pens, lot's of signing and note taking to be done. In an effort to be eco friendly they did away with the fully plastic pens which lasted up to two months before needing a replacement, they replaced them with pens made from pressed paper and the plastic tip is some weak bio degradable plastic analog. The major flaw with these pens is the "plastic" tip starts to break after a few days of use making writing untidy as the nib moves around and, after a few more days the paper body of the pen starts to weaken and you certainly don't want to get it wet. We end up throwing them away after less than a weeks use and i have a suspicion that these pens are actually creating more waste and costing us more inn the long run.
Check out that guy that's using Pyrolysis To melt plastic down into it's base materials and make gasoline and diesel and even make it into plastic again. He's a young man working out of his back yard but he just got a $100,000 grant so he'll be getting some better facilities soon. If he can do this in his backyard there's no reason we shouldn't be able to band together as a species and get this plastic out of the ocean and stop the introduction of microplastics into our environment. The name of his channel is Naturejab
The oil companies will never let that happen, and government officials are in their back pockets.
He made diesel and ran a truck off it. So not a scam. He’s aware that it’s not profitable but it’s a solution to destroying the plastic and we already pay for recycling so why not get something useful out of it instead of shipping it all off the third world countries where most of it ends up in landfills and our oceans
I'm really proud of Costco. What they're doing I'm sure makes a huge impact since they're such a large company. I've noticed so many small changes to their packaging that use less plastic than before, or switching it to cardboard... Good stuff.
Most people couldn't care less about the environment lmao. I mean that sums up why people toss garbage out their car windows every second.
Polymaker, a plastics manufacturer specializing in 3d printing literally says in the product description for PLA 3d printing filaments (a bioplastic made from corn starch, and probably the most popular bioplastic) that it is technically biodegradable, but you can't just throw it in your backyard and expect it to degrade. It has to be done in a controlled environment which can only be acheived in industrial composting facilities. That proves that companies say things like biodegradable and compostable and people think they can just throw it in their backyard but they can't.
Well it will degrade over time...nature is adapting too, there are plastic-eating bacteria found in wild now.
When I see green packaging, I just assume it doesn't work and buy something else.
As a consumer, you gotta be really smart and do some research to find out how to lower your environmental impact. You absolutely cannot rely on the packaging, because companies have a monetary incentive to bend the truth. I've seen kitchen scrubs advertised as being made of natural resources, where the actual scrubbing part was plain old plastic with a wood handle attached, and I've seen plastic bottles advertised as a more sustainable alternative to glass, supposedly because it weighs less so it's cheaper to transport. Buying organic also matters, but if the organic food you're buying was shipped halfway around the globe, it's probably a worse alternative to buying local and eating according to the season.
Another shocker is that polyesther, polyurethane and polyamide are oil derivatives - that's to say, they're essentially plastics and thus neither biodegradable nor sustainable. Yet a substantial amount of the clothing industry uses these materials in everything from shoes to underwear.
The other issue is that we love buying products, dispose of them, and repeat! It's a cycle which we need to break. Consumers want brand new things to consume, consume, consume!
Ecofriendly label being printed on plastic is next level irony. 😭😭
I'm the councillor (councilman for Americans) in charge of waste collections for my local council, which has one of the best recycling rates in the country. So believe me when I say that recycling is absolutely a scam by the manufacturers. Most of it is too contaminated for us to recycle, and the stuff which can be recycled usually gets sent overseas so we don't really know what ultimately happens to it. Most plastic just ends up being incinerated. Not buying plastic does far more for the planet than "recycling" it does. Though, of course, buying it is pretty unavoidable unfortunately, since they cram it into everything.
I worked for a disposal company, everything you return to Walmart and the other big brand stores are ending up at recycling! Even unopened items, absolutely everything, from a picture frame to computers and TV's! We had one guy going every week to all the stores and collecting the returns then smashing them to pieces with a hammer, that was his job, 5 days a week.
As an European, most of this eco shtick feels like targeted at radical chic folks.
Most people are poor and they'll choose the cheaper option, sometimes the cheaper option is full of problems because you live in a food desert area. Example: I'm 31 and I've been wearing the same clothes since my height capped. 15ish years. Three of my tshirts full of holes that I used for pajamas got too damaged and I decided to get new ones. In my 10k people town I couldn't find a 100% cotton tshirt, I had to go to the near city to get plastic free tshirts. Driving 40km or getting a plastic filled tshirt? It depends really on how poor you are, sometimes.
As a kid I did a science experiment about composable materials. We did a small compost of newsprint, Styrofoam, and one other material, I think it was plastic coated paper or something like that. I was honestly surprised how much the Styrofoam actually did break down in a week. The pills were almost all separated and decomposing, but at the end we were told that the Styrofoam wouldn't decompose much more than that for hundreds of years. Compostability is weird.
"We all just want to buy stuff without feeling bad about it"
Do we. Who is we
Very cool video. Many eco friendly products are making a difference, although on a smaller scale than what is actually needed. The problem is that these companies continue to take baby steps and resist change whenever possible. This is the cost of deregulation. Until companies are forced to change their ways, they will continue business as usual. People play a huge role in this dynamic with what they buy and how they live. Using less, buying in bulk, and specifically buying products with more eco friendly packaging pushes companies in that direction because they respond to consumer behavior. The best way to deal with all the plastic is to simply use less plastic. It can't be avoided entirely, but getting it down to a minimum and then having everyone do that will make a difference. Changing consumer behavior and developing better environmental policies is the way out of this mess. We can't wait around for corporate America to save us. Never going to happen! 🤪👍
I didn’t know you had to remove the bristles from the bamboo brush before it could be recycled. Learned something new today.
The only reason we feel bad about what we buy is because the media tells us to so we voluntarily spend more on products.
The same thing exists for kids. You take regular product, add label 🏷️ for kids = +30% in $
One big thing we could all do reduce microplastic waste would be to eliminate polyester, acrylic, or fully synthetic, petroleum-based clothing items. Each time we wash them, they release plastic into the water supply. Aim for cotton, linen, wool, hemp, silk, etc. Sure, there are issues with all fiber sourcing, but at least we're tackling one of the problems.
I work at a manufacturing plant that makes regular items. Once a year for 3 weeks we make the entire year of all natural products. We clean the machines thoroughly, run the natural stuff 24x7, and then store it. Then switch back to the regular recipes.
Buying used is a big deal in terms of sustainability! The amount of shit perfectly functional thrown in the streets in the US is unbelievable
I think one of the most important things we can do is try to avoid buying from a corporation whenever possible. For instance, if you’re buying cheese at a grocery store, Tillamook is still family owned (and freaking delicious).
Was getting a bit depressed because my favourite youtuber just got cancelled and gone ghost since, but it's okay because I think I found my new favourite content creator ❤
8:30 as an example,
I appreciate you playing relaxing music while talking about a topic that is infuriating.
one thing i got that was actually eco friendly:
i got some bamboo silverware that is re-useable, very simply cut, and there was ZERO plastic on the packaging, it was awesome and i still use it to this day
1:03 listening to this in my kitchen with headphones and suddenly panicking because it felt like something was about to explode