Mandatory zero waste/biodegradable packaging would go a long way toward solving many of the litter and garbage problems, not that those are the critical ones right now.
We compost everything possible, we save paper and cardboard to burn in winter, and recycle what our township can sell. The rest of our garbage is plastic, virtually entirely just pointless packaging.
I forget to mention in my OP that these clients live in enormous mansions, at least 12,000 sq. ft., and have several vacation manses, and they think nothing of it. There is zero, and I mean ZERO, sense of: I need to do my part for the planet.
One client flew 11 of her friends to Maui for a week of dancing and partying on her family’s company jet. The pilots dropped them off in Hawaii, then returned the empty jet to Chicago, then flew the empty jet back to Maui to pick up the partiers, then returned them to Chicago, where they bypassed the “long lines” at airport and were whisked home in a limo. Private jets use enormous amounts of fuel. That one trip probably negated the ANNUAL conservation of 500 environmentally minded U.S. families. And if you had cautioned her for being a terrible planetary caretaker, this charming little gal dripping in diamonds would have told you to blank-off. And she LOVES you-know-who for president in 2024.
Worry about the fate of future Americans and other planet-dwellers? “Let them eat cake!” And in case you’re wondering, the client who flew her friends to Maui on the company jet? I’m sure she found a way to expense it and stick other taxpayers for the cost of partying.
COVID showed much of ‘management’ that, yes, people can work from home. I’m sure that pissed off the micro-managers when they found out that they where rather pointless.
Now, this isn’t that altruistic, I ALWAYS wanted to work from home. Never thought about it much, but I now drive about 6000 miles less a year. That our brick and mortar office space only needs half as many people has to save a lot. They where going to build another building. Not sure if that’s still in the plans.
I do get deliveries. But to a UPS box I have in town (not to my home). When I go into town, I pick stuff up. Makes no sense to have someone drive out to me when I have to run an errand anyway.
“It was a ‘working’ trip’”
This article covers various schools of thought on this point reasonably well.
My consulting work for the past decade or so has focused on developing new energy technologies that reduce emissions.
I can’t tell you that they’ve made up for the emissions from all my travel to perform that work. Although I’ve cut that back massively after people became comfortable with less face time.
My view is neither of your options. It is that you should be honest with yourself and others, and do what you can or wish to mitigate your own personal contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution and excess consumption without deluding yourself that you are either going to cause any change on a global scale (even if you convince all of your family, friends, and neighbors to follow your example) or that purchasing “carbon offsets” is doing anything effective other than lining the pockets of people pulling over a scam. I know people (many of them climate researchers whom I’ve met in my own effort to become well versed in global climate system modeling) who have implemented extreme lifestyle restrictions to minimize their person carbon and consumption footprint to a pathological degree, often with great harm to their personal and professional lives that will in no way impact climate change, and which actually provides a contrary example to those who see how much they struggle without really accomplishing anything.
I would say that you should use your portion of collective influence, i.e. your vote and personal budget, to influence elected officials and business leaders to effect actual change at levels that may provide some merit, but it is clear that ship has long sailed; even if these people weren’t bought and paid for by commercial interests that will expend far more to fight any changes that might impact their business, but they are just as deeply entrenched in the same system of hydrocarbon energy and constant demand for fiscal growth that you and I are, and should they call for a drastic curtailing of fossil fuel usage and financial austerity they would be removed from their elected and business positions faster than they could issue the press release, notwithstanding the almost immediate humanitarian impact that these measures would have.
We aren’t going to reverse or even substantially mitigate global climate change because it is just too big of a problem that requires cooperation from too many competing interests, and we aren’t going to do anything about the multitude of other exceedances of planetary boundaries because the costs and loss of growth potential is just too great. We will continue on the same path we’ve been on for the last one hundred and fifty-odd years, and many people will lie to themselves and others that there is either no problem or we’ll come up with technomagical pixie-dust solutions because “that’s what we always do” even though nobody can explain how this will actually work or how even the most grounded proposals can possibly be scaled up to a global level on any timescale that will be of any use. We’ve already exceeded the excess heating levels that climatologists and ecologists have warned us will be calamitous, and are barreling onward toward a projection that is almost certain to be catastrophic for human civilization.
Fundamentally, I don’t care what you or anyone else does; I think it is obscene and tasteless to flaunt conspicuous consumption, but it isn’t as if trading in your Expedition for a Prius is going to ‘save the world’. You should do whatever feels appropriate to you. Just don’t lie about it and pat yourself on the back for purchasing carbon offsets to salve your soul.
Stranger
ISTM it is the first option. Most of what you have written is that individual attempts to mitigate climate change are worthless. Anything we do is less then a drop in a bucket.
So, why bother? Fly your private jet, drive your Hummer, have a 5,000 sqft house to yourself. No jet, driving a Prius and a 750 sqft home won’t change a thing.
No, that is completely your interpretation which is totally divorced from what I wrote. Personally, I think that performative nihilism and conspicuous consumption are not healthy or even comforting; they are their own form of pathological response to the trauma of fear and uncertainty, and one that does nothing to promote a sense of community or well-being among your friends and family.
If you want to live a “jet setting lifestyle” after winning a billion dollar lottery that is your business and I have little interest in criticizing you until you start espousing boastful lies about how your carbon credits are making up for the excesses and waste of your consumption. You could certainly use some of that money to impact your local environment, or you could use it in a quixotic gesture to bring awareness to the issues and try to force systematic changes, or contribute to a food bank, an animal shelter, a wetlands restoration, et cetera, because this is a world that could always use a little more compassion, and that can be purchased for cheap as long as you aren’t insistent on it being accompanied by a promotional campaign.
That we aren’t going to build, buy, or wish our way out of the progressing existential catastrophes isn’t really in question to anyone who has taken a hard look at the science and the realities of hypothetical and proposed corrections. That doesn’t mean that the best or only response is to party like there’s no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow, and one after that, and after that, et cetera, even if they aren’t as good as the day previous.
Stranger
I do nothing for the environment. Very occasionally I will help pull this extremely damaging invasive English Ivy from local trails and hillsides, where it’s contributory to premature soil erosion.
Don’t recycle, ever. Am fairly sure hobos or whoever grab beer cans from the dumpster. I do “recycle” cardboard (meaning, AFAICT, put it in one of the “special” dumpsters marked “cardboard”…yes, I am skeptical of the process), but only because my HOA fines me a hundo if I don’t and some rotten do-gooder of a neighbor rats me out.
OTOH, my electricity use is frugal, mostly because it’s stupid expensive, and while my car is neither a hybrid nor an EV, I drive prudently and get pretty good gas mileage, sort of, sometimes. Also, I don’t litter, not that that’s a real accomplishment.
My parents recycle and compost and all that, like fiends, AFAICT, but I suppose that’s just a hobby for them. Pretty sure my sister and her family do likewise, for whatever reasons.
Work pays big lip service to recycling, up to including various little color-coded bins, which I think is adorable.
Honestly, I don’t care to contemplate what little things I might do, like put a brick in my toilet tank, that could “make a difference,” because I just don’t care.
/* “friends”? I’m really not sure. Most of my friends in town are kind of lazy, like me. I don’t often hang out much anymore at guy friends’ apartments, since I stopped going to bars frequently, so just from memory. And previous girlfriends, including recently, have been more of the “lip service” type of “ZOMG you should rinse that tuna can out and put it in the box, because it’s good for environment like puppies and seals” ranging to the supremely lazy. All sorts, really.
At a corporate level there is the ethical standards of a B Corporation, that answers to stakeholders first not shareholders. Goes beyond the triple bottom line of protecting planet people and prosperity.