That doesn’t seem like too much effort to be responsible and recycle. Obviously, your mileage varies.
Discussions like this are often misdirected. Progressive people brag about how environmentally-friendly they are and wonder why others aren’t. And promise to buy their cereals from stores that recycle packing material.
But corporations are in business to make a profit — some would even argue that it’s a dereliction of their fiduciary duties to spend money without profit or coercion. And 95% of the public will take the easy way, and drown whatever efforts a few progressives achieve.
I’ve taken the liberty of emphasizing a sentence by one who “gets it”:
Yes. Solutions not based on government incentives are just useless wanking. Note that people often follow the Categorical Imperative in a polling place, when they wouldn’t in their daily life.
Reliance on government action is difficult in today’s America, where liars, polluters and greedy kleptocrats spend much effort and money sowing distrust of government. But if our young people are awakened, the future may become more reality-based.
Comprehend much? The conversation is about the difficulty in NOT recycling an item ( greasy pizza box) which outwardly appears to be recyclable, which NYC has deemed recyclable.
In my building the tenants are not allowed to take the trash out to the curb themselves. We put it into a common area for building personnel to manage. While we are responsible for the initial sorting, stuff gets thrown into the wrong bin all the time. Our super and his staff sort it out. So no matter where I place that pizza box, I’m pretty sure at the end of the week it’s going to be tied up in that bundle with all the other pizza boxes and picked up as cardboard recycling.
I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to start by picking at the OP:
“let’s assume that the frequently repeated factoid that a handful of corporations produce many times more pollution, waste, and general environmental destruction than all individual citizens combined worldwide is true”
This statement is either trivially true, or it is trivially false, depending on the definitions we choose, and those definitions matter to how we discuss the consequences.
It’s trivially true that for direct emissions the world’s industries produce the most pollution and environmental destruction, but they do so on behalf of the world’s consumers, so we as consumers are on hook for our share of that. And how do you compare Shell oil’s emissions to mine anyway? It’s trivially true that it is larger, but that is a comparison that doesn’t really make sense, it’s more interesting to see what changes in Shell would mean for my consumption of their products.
Reducing individual responsibility and laying the blame on corporations is not much different from reducing national responsibility and blaming the rest of the world.
Coming from a small, oil producing and high carbon country I see the latter argument all the time. “Our emissions are tiny compared to China’s, so us cutting our emissions in half do not matter. So stop shaming us about it!”
Of course it has less effect on the environment if I avoid flying as much as I can compared to becoming the president of United Airlines and cutting half of all flights, but that’s not really a realistic action now, is it?
And there is of course need for government action, but that requires a public willing to go along, and that is less likely to happen if even the people who vote for government action aren’t willing to voluntarily suffer the consequences.
We’re responsible for our personal choices, they are what, in aggregate, creates corporate pollution and government action/inaction and influences the choices of those who make decisions that influence many individuals.
Corporations aren’t some big alien robots or something. They’re made up of people and exist to serve people. Just for example, if people stop using plastic straws, companies will stop making them. If people stop driving gasoline powered vehicles, automotive companies will stop making them, and oil companies will stop producing gas. If people stop buying hundreds of plastic disposable knickknacks, companies will stop wasting the massive amounts of energy that goes into producing prodigious amounts of disposable knickknacks. If people stop buying products encased in cubic feet of plastic garbage, companies will stop packaging their products encased in cubic feet of plastic garbage.
Blaming corporations is just a dodge. What they’re really saying is “I don’t feel like convincing millions of my peers to stop buying environment destroying garbage, instead let’s just force the (much smaller number of) companies they buy from to not give them any choice in the matter”. It’s easier to compel the few than the many. But that doesn’t mean the many won’t be compelled, just indirectly, so the people doing the compulsion feel better about it.
The question is: should you convince your peers or should you convince your representatives?
~Max
Does this follow other issues as well?
Gun murders … ban ‘assault rifles’
I’m sure there are plenty other obvious choices as well. But all distraction can be seen as “but we’ve got to just do SOMETHING”, and it’s almost always the wrong tact.
Your chances of convincing your representatives are a whole lot better if you can also convince a lot of your peers.
– Nobody can do everything. But most people can do more than one thing.
And even if the recycling is currently mostly getting dumped in the landfill because China quit buying it: if people keep recycling, this improves the chances of someone else finding a use for that part of the waste stream and becoming willing to take it.
(Around here they specifically state that they don’t want the greasy pizza box in the recycle. Clean cardboard and paper only, please, not the greasy stuff.)
If your city has deemed it recyclable, why are you making such a fuss about it?