> And when I see money, I see time that was spent. And time is something you can't get back, it's gone for good once you spend it. Every garbage can is a waste of life. Minutes and hours thrown away.
Quite the opposite. Often food waste is the result of convenience. That garbage can full of food in the cafeteria is a prime example: People could get smaller portions, but then they'd have to queue again to get seconds if they got too little, so they get a little more to be on the safe side.
Sometimes, something in my fridge spoils because I didn't eat it fast enough. I could always shop only for the next day when I'm sure I'll eat it, but then I'd spend at least an hour extra each week on trips to the store.
Sure, some time was spent to produce it, but the low price is a good signal that that is negligible.
> A transaction is not a waste just because some people (who weren't part of the transaction) believe it to be wasteful. Only those involved in the transaction can determine that metric.
> If I have leftover food of certain things, I tend to throw it away and rather buy fresh.
I find it difficult to appreciate this viewpoint. There's a certain elegance in using your resources efficiently and not wasting things. I find it significantly more satisfying to find a use for things rather than discarding them. This also applies to possessions, and more abstract things like writing code and not wasting lines of code or memory, or writing and not wasting words.
You are so casual about throwing away an irreplaceable resource.
Like many conversations about the environment and taxation, many people seem happy to talk all day about how others can afford to pay and about how others should pay.
Personally, I worry about how costly those defuse costs are overall. How often do we save uneconomic resources by wasting aggregate large amounts of resources. The tradeoffs seem to be rarely counted. Only one side of the ledger is looked at.
In context Switzerland decided that all garbage is incinerated. Perhaps we should presume that Switzerland has done this because it is the most enviromentally friendly and least wasteful measure.
> I personally don't see how it makes sense to not just ignore the deposit and recycle via modern means.
There's a psychological effect. For example, the grocery store charges 5 cents per bag. If I forget to bring bags with me to the store, it irks me that I have to pay 5 cents, even though the amount is trivial and completely non-substantive.
> Now it is my time to consume: drive a nice car, buy things I always wanted, travel a lot.
Not having it in the past is not an excuse to waste in the present.
I understand your point though, but let's see examples.
For how long you're intending to keep that nice car? Modern cars easily last well over a decade, so if you do get a nice car, and keep it for long, that is a good route to take.
Or another one: instead of buying plastic garden furniture and replacing it every X year because you're bored with it, buy locally made, wooden ones. Higher initial investment indeed, but those last for decades with minimal maintenance of re-painting every few years.
The current idea of consumption is near equivalent to wasting, but it shouldn't have to be like that. When purchasing, plan ahead, and take arcane factors into the process: what is it packaged in? how far it was shipped from? for how long I'm intending to use it? And so on.
Try not to waste, that's all.
So much of the "piled up cargo" is cheap, bad quality, throwaways stuff, that nobody really needs or should need when better options are available.
EDIT: fyi, I'm from eastern europe, so I had plenty of time in my childhood to learn how to be patient to have something. When you to save money in small bits for a "grand" purchase, like a bicycle, a guitar, a PC, etc, one leanrs how not to spend it on things they don't actually need.
> by taxing companies on every item of theirs which goes into landfill
Second that idea. From my perspective, if recycling was perfect the only limitation on single use items would be how convenient it is to dispose and obtain another one. Also, I hate searching for new clothes that fit when the current options go out of fashion.
>a considerable amount of what we 'consume' does not entail necessarily excessive resource consumption
If you pay for some abstract service, the money goes to pay human beings who ultimately either consume or save, don't they? You pay for something that doesn't involve using a lot of resources in itself, but the money goes to someone who uses it to buy gas or food or whatever, so ultimately consumption is pretty proportional to dollars anyway.
> Consumers can be responsible by radically cutting consumption.
If I drop my consumption by $20k, I believe my extra investment of $20k will get consumed elsewhere in the economy.
If I spend that $20k on eco-friendly shit, I believe that the people I spent it on spend the majority of that on non-eco friendly shit (e.g. international travel holidays).
I want a better answer - one that isn't some simplistic catchphrase.
It could equally well be spent by me if left in my wallet rather than taxed away and wasted.
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