Corporations

Corporations could've been growing bamboo and making straws out of them for decades, they chose plastic because it was cheaper. They very much has a significant role to play in this.

Unless you go live in a forest and grow your own food, your money will always end up in the hands of one of a dozen or two people.

So let's keep buying shit we don't need? Using the straw example: You don't need straws. They give a minor increase in convenience, while making the world a worse place. We don't need them, but we buy them in mass making the world a worse place, then when some try to get rid of them we kick and scream because "it's the corporation's fault!".

You’re not as clever or edgy as you think you are, you are literally licking the boot that is standing on your neck and think it’s a treat.

Someone's saying "don't give money to corporations" and "let's not interact with the system", and you're saying that and calling them lazy, all as an excuse to keep giving money to corporations. Look in the fucking mirror. Literally your entire comment is an excuse to participate in the system you claim need to have problems with. Take some damn responsibility, and stop saying you want things to change while not being whiling to change your way of life. The one who's lazy, is the one sitting at home making excuses to keep mindlessly consuming and saying other people need to find solutions and stop feeding your addiction - which they should, but that still doesn't change the fact you have an addiction.

I don't feel like writing another whole comment about this, so I'll just copy and paste something I wrote a while ago:

When people say it’s not “we” and it’s just a few people, or just companies, it always seems to me that they are - consciously or subconsciously - just making excuses for not having to actually do anything and hoping someone else will solve the problem for them. They want the problem to be solved, while not having to do anything or change their lifestyle.

There are some very obvious and clear examples of this; here’s two of them:

• Studies have shown most people are in favour of carbon taxes. But with carbon taxes, companies would just shift the extra cost onto the consumers by increasing prices. One thing affected by carbon tax, would be the price of gas itself. And when prices (especially gas prices) increase, that usually results in a lot of anger and protests. So why would any democratically elected politician ever implement a carbon tax? If they did, they would be voted out, and the next one to come in would just undo it.

• Another obvious example, is meat. We know one of the major protagonists in CO2 emissions is animal farming. Red meat especially is responsible for a huge source of those emissions. And yet most people don’t even wanna think about eating less meat, and they will still crack jokes about vegans and look at them sideways. And as for regulations regarding meat, the example from before still applies.

As you seem to be implying, what really needs to happen is a whole cultural shift. Trying to shift blame onto to a few people and hope they get the guillotine, won’t change anything as long as people keep demanding all the same things because then someone else will come in to fulfil that demand. Whether we like it or not, we have to accept that it’s the sum of all our actions that will determine the future, and our actions can influence other people’s actions; therefore, one way or another, we are all responsible.

Sustainable practises, especially energy generation are way cheaper than non renewable sources, so why would corporations try to make energy cost more for themselves? And it’s definitely cheaper to wash and reuse glass bottles than it is to fabricate entirely new disposable plastic ones. But the general public preferred not having to return their glass bottles for some change back and would rather have the convenience of the plastic bottle and aluminium can.

Buildings use concrete because it’s cheap and strong, and people want to live in well built, sturdy and most importantly cheap buildings. Obviously, corporations could make their buildings out of more expensive sustainable materials and they don’t because publicly traded companies have a legal duty to make profit and clearly there is not enough of a push from the consumer to make the change to more sustainable buildings worth it.

If you want to change companies you need to show them that with your money, and of course you can always vote for a representative who has environmental interests at heart and they can directly show companies what the consumer wants.

But the truth is, not enough people care enough about the environment to prioritise choosing sustainable companies over consuming endless products.

And you can blame companies for marketing useless or cheap products to the world, which will obviously cause consumers to want it (if the marketing is any good), and this time the main blame is on the government for not putting the environment first and not forcing adverts for unsustainable products to have warnings about their environmental impact. But the government is installed by people (in democracies) and the people clearly don’t care.

Me and you might care, I suspect we both do care deeply. But not everyone cares, and that’s the problem.