261–270 of 528 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the courage to express 12. Absolute anthropocentrism can’t continue indefinitely and we already see boomerang effects.
Anti-natalists are the enemy of mankind.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
4. Walking. A bit less minimalistic: ride your (non e-) bike, scooter, skateboard, kayak, sled, basically anything non motorized. Use best tire quality so you don’t change then often. A bite more minimalistic: prefer walking barefoot anytime you can. Shoes are tire that wear out. King of related: still looking for shoe/soles that last. My grand mother used to wear wood clogs, not sure where to find some that fits me.
Wood clogs sound terrible for the health of your feet. There's guides for making huaraches with tire rubber. And there's also barefoot sandals that claim to last a life time (but cost like 100 bucks).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd be super interested to hear what steps you are taking to have such an electricity bill!
I have similarly low electric bills for much of the year by way of solar panels and Powerwalls. The solar power is enough to power the whole house (with all electric HVAC & appliances, and no natural gas), charge the batteries, charge the car, and export the excess to the grid. Most nights the batteries supply enough power to make it through the night, even with the A/C or heat running intermittently. Only when the b…
If it costs me $20k to get the solar panels + battery set up and they're good for ~15-20 years, its not really a $2/mo power bill. Amortizing the $20k over 20 years that's still just under $84/mo for the hardware. If it only lasts me 15 years its ~$111/mo.
And that's assuming I had all the cash on hand at the time to install the system and didn't need to take out a loan. If I had to finance half of that ($10k), at 6% APR over that 20 years that's $71/mo for just the financed half and adding that $10k amortized is another $41.66 for a total of ~$112/mo.
But hey my power bill is only $2/mo!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve had a lot of water bottles over the years. This is quite an unpopular take, but I believe PET to be lesser of all evils. I’ve spent a lot of money on numerous steel and plastic water bottles. They all break and good luck recycling them. Most likely they end up in landfill. PET bottles use less raw resources, are cheap, lightweight, extremely durable, and when they reach end of life they’re easier to “recycle” (d…
Steel is mostly recycled. Pet is very much not. Pet does leach (as microplastic). No point in buying plastic bottles unless they're pla. Just reuse a water/soda bottle you bought on a whim.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Water bottles, if not cleaned properly with a soap and brush on the inside, will be coated with a bacterial "lawn". Copper prevents that. Lots of bacteria need such a lawn to propagate, only some can multiply without a substrate. So even if the "free" water part won't be desinfected, copper has an overall positive effect on the bacterial content of your drinking water.
As someone who washes my (steel) water bottle at most 1x a week, and drinks ~10-14L of water a week, I've never gotten sick from drinking out of my bottle before. You can usually tell if the water in your bottle is going bad / filled w bacteria..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
4. Walking. A bit less minimalistic: ride your (non e-) bike, scooter, skateboard, kayak, sled, basically anything non motorized. Use best tire quality so you don’t change then often. A bite more minimalistic: prefer walking barefoot anytime you can. Shoes are tire that wear out. King of related: still looking for shoe/soles that last. My grand mother used to wear wood clogs, not sure where to find some that fits me.
Do you wear a hair shirt too? How are you going to transport heavy goods without some kind of motorized or motor-assist vehicle? Unless you want to keep horses or donkeys. Ebikes are a godsend. Without one I'd have to get things delivered by van. This is the problem with environmentalism-as-actually-practiced -- the conversation starts with plastic pollution, you look away for five seconds, and suddenly there are a b…
It’s not about copying thinks third world but about health, resource management and public space enjoyability.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I couldn't speak for other brands, but Brother will give you a free shipping label so you can send your empty toner cartridge back to them. It's not charity, they want it back because they can reuse most of it in ways that a melt-and-remold style recycling scheme can't. I see no reason the same couldn't be true of most packaging, in addition to things like TV's. If you built it, you ought to be uniquely positioned to…
I think we should be subsidizing plastics that end up in landfill. It's the best place for it, as it's both safely contained and impractical to take out again, making it a reliable form of carbon sequestration.
Much of the 80's recycling movement was funded as greenwashing by the plastics industry. The lie was that plastic was a "closed cycle" and "infinitely reusable." In the late 90's/early 00's, "biodegradable plastic" was another lie. We need to ban all materials that persist with poisonous degradation products. Most bottles should then transition back to glass or to enamel-lined (not BPA) cans. Glass persists for thous…
Its all still greenwashing. "You can save the world without even getting up from your chouch!" is the sales pitch of the day. I'm far from what you'd consider an environmentalist in the sense of the current vernacular and I have a ridiculously low carbon footprint (my electric bill 9 months out of the year is $2 a month to give you an idea) and very low rate of disposal of plastics. All it takes is a handful of lifes…
Please share these handful of lifestyle changes.