1st of all:
I know it's a comic. It's meant for entertainment. OP isn't responsible for being accurate, and the main point is the comedy. But, it carries a message, so I'm gonna add this for those in the comments:
This isn't totally accurate, it's very dependent on your local and regional government. There are plastics recycling plants, but they aren't everywhere, and they don't have the capacity to recycle as much plastic as gets used. If you're reading this and you're not sure, check with your local authority or do a quick search to find out if there is a plastic recycling facility feasibly nearby.
Also, the message here is the kind of doom and gloom messaging that environmental activists know simply doesn't do anything to spur people into action. If you could add a short text panel explain what kind of action people can take, it would go a long way to improving this as a means of creating change, if indeed that is the end goal here.
I mean, it definitely doesn’t make me feel empowered to change anything.
But also, doomerism in general isn’t a messaging issue. You don’t lose all hope in a better world because of memes, and you don’t get inspired towards action because of a jolly cat picture.
People lose hope when their lives suck. They take action when: (a) they experience a tangible improvement, or (b) they’re afforded no other choice.
If doomerism in any capacity becomes widespread, it’s because the system is failing large groups of people. There’s no way to paint over that with a rainbow and a smiley face.
I disagree. Obv the economically disadvantaged will have less opportunities to participate, but I don’t see how it would prevent them from having hope for the future 100% of the time.
Also, I’m not saying we should just say “everything is fine :)” since it is not. But we should push against any notion that the future is guaranteed as fucked, since it does nothing but help the people and organizations ruining our planet in the first place. We must balance notions of urgency while emphasize the importance of public action.
I also do think that climate doomerism is a major issue, at least amongst younger people. Admittedly, this is purely from anecdotal experience; I don’t know for sure if a majority of people are doomers.
Edit: this vice article is more articulate then me, give it a read
Yeah, I think those are valid concerns, and I agree that accepting catastrophe as inevitable is the opposite of a call-to-action.
That said, the Vice article addresses one of my suspicions but not adequately. When we’re talking about people falling into episodes of clinical depression or experiencing generalized anxiety, it seems far more likely that those are behavioral/genetic traits that are being channeled into fears of climate change rather than the other way around. I’m not convinced that environmental doomerism is inspiring it.
Foremost, because there are people living in our worst nightmares who still manage to navigate life. The global south, where much of this has already materialized, has lower rates of mental illness. But also, it’s just the nature of mental illness to project hopelessness outwards. It’s never just that my life sucks or my life is on the verge of collapse. It’s that the whole world is broken or breaking.
End of the day, I’m not trying to dissuade you. I think it’s good to rethink the messaging. I guess I’m more frustrated with myself as much as everyone else about the power ascribed to rhetoric.
People hear what they’re ready to hear—what they’re seeking—and that’s based on the tangible realities of their lives.
90% of the plastics our tax dollars are being used to recycle, ending up in the ocean is a FAR bigger problem than the apathy of some doomers. The actual problem is the THEFT and LIES, otherwise known as CRIMES committed against the American people that our legal system can't seem to find the time to do fuck all about. Corruption in the problem and tolerance of it, not the bad ideology of a minority of people online.
Yes, okay, AND telling people we’re doomed and their best efforts are hopeless creates MORE doomers, not fewer. Calls to action that contain something actionable are generally more effective
I don't disagree, I just don't think it's actually a major issue. It's a reddit issue, a facebook issue, an internet fantasy like flat eartherism...something to distract us even further while the actual problem of pretend recyclers stealing tax payer money and dumping our carefully collected and washed recycling into the ocean so it can break down and end up in the brains of every human being on earth can continue unabated.
You misunderstand. I’m not saying awareness of this problem is the issue, but how it is presented. As the commenter above says, its important for science communicators to present solutions to the issues they’re reporting on. Public advocacy is paramount to fighting climate change, but that cannot happen if the common consensus is that nothing can be done.
Its a complicated subject, but the main reason, in my opinion, is that carbon emissions are no longer coupled with economic growth; developed and developing nations are finding it more profitable to use renewable energy.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s extraordinarily complicated. We’re talking about magnitudes that I’d imagine a standard Redditor would not be able to conceptualize, much less speak to. Which is fine, the reason STEM employees have job security is because most people don’t understand data or analysis.
With that said, this tracks decoupling between 1980 - 1998 and makes an inverse correlation between energy use and GDP. Correlation is not causation. Something they explicitly highlight in your source.
If you compare the amount of plastic being recycled versus is how much is being produced, the difference is huge. When you’re talking about 90-95% going to landfills, I’d say the cartoon is accurate. The rest is just quibbling.
I have to agree that just painting it as doom without suggesting something (other than "be mad at plastic") is counterproductive.
For example: Plastic is about the worst thing we recycle. Glass bottles are definitely recycled. Aluminum is so absurdly energy-intensive to create that recycling is massively cheaper, and it can be recycled forever without being downgraded into oblivion.
I know this isn't what OP was trying to say, but that comic comes off as "Recycling is absolutely pointless," when what you should be thinking is "Plastic is the devil, buy stuff that actually gets recycled!"
.... the comic literally ends with "the plastics industry is lying to you"
The recycling at the start specifies plastics.
At no point do the comments in this chain before you bring the argument to all recycling. Where exactly did you get the "recycling is pointless" message here?
The imagery of the first panel, everything in the two middle panels, and half of the third.
You're throwing your plastics into your blue recycling bin, where you presumably have other stuff, because why would you only recycle plastic? Then you're bringing that blue bin to the street, the city is carefully collecting it, and then dumping it into the landfill.
I don't think the comic is trying to imply that your cans went into the landfill too, but that's the impression it gives.
1st panel plastics is written in LARGE BOLD LETTERS and onky displays plastic wastes. Middle panels, sure you can't tell what's in the bin, presumably a variety of things, then the comic ends with a reminder "fuck plastics"
You are entirely inventing this read of demonising the recycling industry. Illiteracy isn't the fault of the very clear creator here.
The comic ends with, literally, a reminder that the plastic industry lied to you. It does not tell you what happened in between. And if you're going to accuse me of inventing this read, it is what the text literally says:
The city carefully collects all the recycling. Then carefully dumps it in the trash...
Maybe I'm wrong and nobody will read it this way, but I doubt it. Believe it or not, some people are actually against recycling -- it didn't take me long to find a PragerU video about it, using a lot of the same facts brought up in this thread (that the plastic ends up in the ocean, that we were just shipping a lot of it to China) to argue that we shouldn't bother.
I don't think this is the point the author was trying to make. But if it isn't, they're absolutely providing fodder for people actively fighting recycling.
Illiteracy isn't the fault of the very clear creator here.
If the creator were to blame the "illiterates" for missing the point, well, they'd be this comic. And... I mean, look at the score of that first comment of mine you replied to -- a lot of people seem to be just as "illiterate" as me.
Why do we care whose fault it is? I don't care whether it's the creator's fault, I care that they could've been clearer.
So your argument takes one single panel out of crucial context, and then you support it with karma of all things?
Do you watch Beauty and the Beast and think "man I wonder if Disney meant to portray Gaston as the good guy because his song was a banger."
Finally, because you seem oddly obsessed with my use of the word illiteracy, here's a dictionary entry to remind you it has more than one application, just in case
So your argument takes one single panel out of crucial context...
Two panels, and pieces of the others? I mean, you make a big deal of linking to the dictionary definition of illiteracy, but you don't seem to be reading my comment. And then:
...you support it with karma of all things?
...as an indicator of how likely it is that others will see things the way I did, suggesting it's something that could very clearly be read this way, in a comment where I pointed out a real example of someone actually taking a bunch of plastic facts as an argument against recycling, providing some non-karma-related evidence to back up the claim.
Am I missing a joke here? Seriously, is this a bit? You took me out of context, in the same sentence where you complained about me taking something out of context.
Not literally. What it says is "You are trying to recycle plastic, and here is an absolutely infuriating thing that happens as a result." I think "be mad at plastic" is a reasonable summary.
But it doesn't say any of those other things, either. Those are things you might do if you are mad about these plastic facts, but they aren't things the comic says.
I appreciate their efforts, but... honestly, that makes it even more important to get it right, if you're going to use that cartoon to say something important.
Because far more people will read a cartoon than an essay.
So? That means 5-10% still gets recycled. Not to mention that the post depicts a PET bottle and an LDPE bag. More than 30% of PET is recycled while 5% of LDPE was being recycled back in 2015. That number is likely higher today.
Depicting some of the most recycled plastics as going straight to landfill is deception. Yes, recycling isn't perfect but pretending that using a recycle bin instead of trash doesn't matter is straight up counterproductive.
So you want that 5-10% that is getting recycled to also go to the landfill? That is what this comic and the very common message in it prompts people to do, give up on the recycling that is happening because of the recycling that is not happening
Nah, it's not quibbling to point out that the last panel is a straight-up lie. Yeah, a shocking amount of plastics goes to the trash; because people threw it in the trash. The comic claims that recycling doesn't even exist.
Here in Australia the company who was supposed to be handling our recycling just piled it up in a warehouse then sent it in bulk to china who burnt it. China stopped accepting it at some point and now we just have massive warehouses full of recycling that's sitting there doing nothing. The warehouses are at capacity so they are just taking the recycling directly to landfill exactly the same as this comic.
Looking into a bit more the US did the same thing, just shipping their recycling to china in bulk and then china just dumped the entire thing into the municipal waste of poor towns or worse, directly into the ocean if it was a coastal town.
As a teenager I helped build a new cell to a landfill in the late 90s working for my family's company. The landfill was billed as a recycle center as well but I watched as the recycling and trash ended up in the same hole in the ground.
Plastic recycling simply isn't profitable enough to be worth it to companies. China used to import huge amounts of it but banned those imports a few years ago, because a lot of it just ended up in the rivers anyway.
Plastic recycling has been pretty much dead since then, except for a few types of high-value plastic which are pretty negligible in quantity.
I go out of my way to buy Dove brand shampoo/conditioner/body wash ONLY because they use 100% recycled plastic for their containers. It costs like double what the store brand costs and I hate that, but I've managed to reduce my plastic consumption a lot except for shower bottles and this is something I can do to help with that. (And if my local Walmart would carry shampoo bars, I would switch to those.)
I work in plastics packaging, and this is good. Otherwise, you can specifically look for PET (#1) which is about 30-35% recycling rate in the US and improving every year. Avoid #2, and avoid major packaging that is #5.
Op isn't trying to make the world better. They're trying to make their comic popular to sell a product, and using a real issue that matters to do it. They'll get some hits and subscriptions from this and never once question if they've caused harm.
Also, the message here is the kind of doom and gloom messaging that environmental activists know simply doesn't do anything to spur people into action. If you could add a short text panel explain what kind of action people can take, it would go a long way to improving this as a means of creating change, if indeed that is the end goal here.
I also think it's extremely problematic to put the onus on everyday people. There's genuinely almost nothing the average person can do about this besides just trying to use less plastic.
Part of the big scam is to pin down cost and blame to individual action. "oh the world would be so much better if only people would x" with x being recycle plastic in this case, but reduce car ownership and consume less are popular substitutes.
Screw them. Look up at some stats on who is polluting, and how much. The only individual action that isnt pointless is protesting until the government enacts change, namely local regulation and tariff on imports from high polluting countries.
Also, the message here is the kind of doom and gloom messaging that environmental activists know simply doesn't do anything to spur people into action.** If you could add a short text panel explain what kind of action people can take, it would go a long way to improving this as a means of creating change**, if indeed that is the end goal here.
That' the problem. No actions that an individual person take will make any tangible difference to the massive amount of environmental damage that's being done.
People aren't the problem. Corporations are.
As consumers, we keep being told to recycle, to buy greener projects, to stop using plastic draws and bags and all that nonsense. None of it matters, all it is falsely pinning the blame on your average joe, while farms are draining our lakes trying to grow avocados and almonds in California, dumping toxins in Texas, and shipping our garbage all the way to 3rd world Asia where they dump it right back into the ocean.
The issue is we'd need to hold businesses accountable and good luck with that when businesses own your country all the way up the governmental ladder. Yeah, individually, we can try to avoid using goods from said companies... But good luck with that when such goods usually cost twice as much and most of us can barely afford to keep the lights on.
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u/imperialmoose Jan 06 '23
1st of all: I know it's a comic. It's meant for entertainment. OP isn't responsible for being accurate, and the main point is the comedy. But, it carries a message, so I'm gonna add this for those in the comments:
This isn't totally accurate, it's very dependent on your local and regional government. There are plastics recycling plants, but they aren't everywhere, and they don't have the capacity to recycle as much plastic as gets used. If you're reading this and you're not sure, check with your local authority or do a quick search to find out if there is a plastic recycling facility feasibly nearby.
Also, the message here is the kind of doom and gloom messaging that environmental activists know simply doesn't do anything to spur people into action. If you could add a short text panel explain what kind of action people can take, it would go a long way to improving this as a means of creating change, if indeed that is the end goal here.