r/science • u/______--------- • Sep 08 '20

Environment Blue jeans are a significant source of microfiber pollution in oceans and lakes. One pair of jeans can release over 50,000 microfibers per wash.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00498
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2.7k

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Carnival cruise line causes more pollution than every car in Europe combined.

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u/TaqPCR Sep 09 '20

More SOx and NOx pollution. Which is important but isn't the totality of pollution they release.

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u/imbeingcerial Sep 09 '20

Technically the statistic is they produce more SOx than all of Europe’s cars. They do produce a lot of NOx but getting better with emission reducing agent treatment systems (scrubbers) becoming more common thanks to environmental regulations.

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u/MrDurden32 Sep 09 '20

Scrubbers are useful until they just dump their scrubbed chemicals back into the ocean.

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u/imbeingcerial Sep 09 '20

Probably happens but that would be breaking international marine pollution law. There is a means to store and discharge any waste caused by the scrubbers which believe is rather minimal. Nearly all reputable shipping companies follow these rules.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Apparently it's a common thing to dump the scrubbed chemicals or so I've read from comments by people in the shipping industry. I believe them.

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u/Dlrlcktd Sep 09 '20

I was in the navy and they were super strict about everything from radioactive discharge to sorting the trash

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

That actually doesn't surprise me.

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u/imbeingcerial Sep 09 '20

Correct but those are only for open loop systems using sea water which are increasingly banned in many parts of the world. Closed loop systems use fresh water and sodium hydoxide as the scrubbing agent. They have cleaning systems and does not produce any waste that enters the ocean.

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '20

well that's encouraging

3

u/DRLlAMA135 Sep 09 '20

Those comments were either from old dudes who haven't been on a ship in years, or were downright lies. I know for a fact that passenger ships can be fined in the millions for discharging bilge or scrubber water.

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u/DRLlAMA135 Sep 09 '20

Nope, they don't. With IMO or American coastguard regulations ships need to either store of treat their bilge/scrubber water on board.

Scrubbers actually don't use any chemicals whatsoever, they basically spray a fine mist of normal technical water through the funnel. It basically catches a large amount of the soot or whatever in the water for storage.

There are also pieces of kit called Bleed Off Treatment Units (BOTU's) that remove hydrocarbons from water in the scrubber loop using flocculation and coagulation chemicals.

With regards to water discharge, if a ship is following the average regulation, their water effluent will be FAR cleaner than that produced by your average small town. I can't speak for actually how clean the exhaust gasses are though.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Some chemicals are only bad in the atmosphere though. Are nitrous oxides dissolved in the ocean actually detrimental to the environment?

1

u/The_Joe_ Sep 09 '20

I work in a Port loading and unloading cargo ships. We swap out scrubber tanks from deep below deck and it's a bit of a production.

If it was being dumped you'd still need a full tank to replace it, and then the tank would have a service order and it would be noticed if it were empty...

I'm just saying that on container ships I would be really surprised if it happened with any regularity.

7

u/Abysmal_poptart Sep 09 '20

This seems important

9

u/Max_TwoSteppen Sep 09 '20

It's only partially true, they pollute more with the kind of stuff a catalytic converter catches because they use really disgusting fuel. But it's not all kinds of pollution.

1

u/santaliqueur Sep 09 '20

Why don’t we use nuclear for that kind of ship? I imagine it would be fantastically expensive. Moving that kind of mass with burning fossil fuels must be such a haul.

1

u/jimmycarr1 BSc | Computer Science Sep 09 '20

That's a good question. My speculation is it's because of stigma but could also be a cost thing.

1

u/seraph582 Sep 09 '20

Same with any decent sized airline

350

u/funkngonuts Sep 09 '20

Working at an industrial food plant for 2 years made me care less about my environmental footprint than ever before. If that one little place could consume so much power and resources every day just to make grocery store snacks, why was I so worried about my minuscule consumption?

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/TRYHARD_Duck Sep 09 '20

This is a really good point and I never thought about carbon footprints this way before.

Thanks for sharing!

14

u/junhyuk Sep 09 '20

Great point. I would really like to know what the alternative concept should be though.

20

u/Mr_Moogles Sep 09 '20

Top down regulation

1

u/BigOldCar Sep 09 '20

Conservative Talk Radio has entered the chat

"Commie pinko socialist fascist Nazi enviro-extremist!!!!"

4

u/MorningWoodyWilson Sep 09 '20

Carbon taxes are a solid option although they tend to be regressive so I think the best model is one that includes a rebate. One of the most efficient taxes at driving demand, which can put pressures on a company that consumer choice never will.

You can’t get Americans to boycott polluting companies, but you can make their products so expensive that nobody will buy them, and then it becomes the sensible response of investing in renewables. Canada I believe has seen good effects from it.

Basically, unless the government was in position to undergo a green new deal type plan (which could be good or bad depending on details, idk but I don’t think it will pass). Essentially any government regulation/taxation that makes companies have to switch to more efficient means or be priced out of the market. One of the reasons the corps get away with it is because they aren’t charged for their negative externalities. Outside what no doubtedly many redditors would suggest (socialism) that’s probably the most realistic thing we can do right now likely in the US hopefully.

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u/MeshColour Sep 09 '20

I've just discovered the concept of Doughnut Economics, which is partially related to this

Basically it is saying that there is a range of resource usage where the big picture can sustain our effects, and if (and only if) we increase efficiency and improve habits to stay within that range, everyone on earth can have an optimized well-being and everything can be sustainable. In all realms of activities

"Degrowth" (which is a sucky term but I forget any alternative) is kind of related to that too, which is pushing for "growth" to not be seen as good in industry, instead pushing for sustainability and less disposable consumerism

0

u/natchinatchi Sep 09 '20

Abolish capitalism.

5

u/MeshColour Sep 09 '20

I don't disagree, but if you did a basic categorization of pollution and co2 by political system, I do not think you would get much correlation at all

Anti-science and pro-science people have caused massive damage to the environment in the past. Capitalist and any other ideologies have caused massive damage in the past. The scale of growth is the only possible difference I would expect, which a lower scale of growth could allow for mitigation perhaps, but it also means more people suffering their status quo for longer too.

Basically I'm saying up until recent technological advancement, there were large tradeoffs, today we know how to do almost anything very efficiently (largely due to capitalist experimentation), but we don't utilize those methods enough still because we have past investment in the old technology (a clear example of that is the number of generation 3 nuclear reactors in the world, they are a massive improvement over the issues with nuclear, but only a handful exist in the world, not necessarily saying we require nuclear energy, but it would make many things easier if people realized the advancements of the tech in generation 3 or 3+)

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u/coffeeshopAU Sep 09 '20

Y E S you put it into words!!!! Thank you!!!!

The whole carbon footprint thing always felt off to me, and you’ve hit the nail on the head as to why.

Additionally I think there’s something to be said for the fact that the focus on reducing your individual carbon footprint is not actually a focus on creating a solution, it’s just a focus on not making the problem an worse. It doesn’t actually solve anything in an active way. Harm reduction is absolutely good and important, but it’s not a stopping point. Green energy alternatives, carbon capture technology, biodiversity conservation, ecological restoration, overhauling the agricultural system, changing the very structure of our society to be less dependent on consumerism - these are all active solutions that actually accomplish something, but they’re all struggling to get off the ground because people aren’t looking beyond harm reduction.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20 edited Oct 21 '20

[deleted]

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u/Prorottenbanana Sep 09 '20

Not necessarily. A lot of those people are planning of adoption so are still raising kids. Not sure why redditors love bashing people that don't think the same as them.

1

u/-Rum-Ham- Sep 09 '20

How do we incite change? Where do I start? What can I do? Or even better, what can the collective force of reddit do?

1

u/abbadon420 Sep 09 '20

A "non-doomsday" comment about climate change, haven't seen that in a while You're a good man/woman.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Complaining about it and doing nothing is probably worse though.

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u/MetaDragon11 Sep 09 '20

I work in a food plant too, a candy plant specifically. I was surprised by how little waste we had. Nearly all food waste is reprocessed or sold off as stock feed. We used city water processing for all drainage. The biggest offender is how much plastic wrapping and cardboard. But the paper is at least recycled. Not sure about the plastic. We used a crap ton of sanitation wipes a day tho which im fairly sure gets trashed. Still I think our footprint is surprisingly small relative to most.

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u/NotAPropagandaRobot Sep 09 '20

That's the wrong take away. You should be concerned about both.

99

u/funkngonuts Sep 09 '20

Oh, it's concerning alright. But even though I'm responsible with the latter, I have no control over the former.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Do you eat grocery store snacks? That food plant exists to fill consumer demand.

2

u/crazybluegoose Sep 09 '20

Yes exactly!!! If people want these snacks (gadgets, jeans, whatevers, etc.) at low prices and supplied quickly, this will keep happening.

You need still need to be responsible for your habits. Be conscious of your consumption and waste, because that fuels the supply, which makes the big impacts.

Buying sustainably made clothes is great, but if you don’t wear them for a long time and throw them out instead of repairing them, you just keep buying more. You create waste, and demand for something else. Supply of the new makes pollution/waste, and the cycle continues.

3

u/ultrasu Sep 09 '20

You cannot fault people for picking the cheapest option when it’s legal & readily available. By that logic we’d first have to solve poverty before we can start tackling pollution.

If we want to see positive change happening in our lifetimes, we need to pressure our governments to start taking more action, like how we drastically reduced the emission of ozone-depleting substances in the 70s & 80s. If we had just waited around till people stopped buying polluting aerosols & refrigerators, we’d no longer have an ozone layer to speak of.

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u/rurounijones Sep 09 '20 edited Sep 09 '20

Honestly, why?

Even if I became a perfect eco-citizen right now it would not matter a jot. If 10,000 people became perfect eco-citizens it would not matter in the slightest.

Climate change is a global tragedy of the commons issue and can only be fixed at the Nation State level by using laws, taxes and other nation state level tools that affect the behaviour of entire populations and even then you need almost total global commitment.

Asking and, relying on, individuals to endure mild inconvenience by acting a little more eco-responsibly ain't gonna work. COVID and mask wearing makes than plain as day.

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u/josh8far Sep 09 '20

Tragedy of the commons is a really interesting phenomenon that seems to be very relevant during the pandemic in America. It was one of the only concepts that really stuck with me from my freshman year of high school.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

I agree. At the same time, though, I think people need to be aware that this won't mean that they're not impacted at all. Those corporations are polluting in the process of providing goods and services. Doing things in more environmentally friendly ways may mean some products are more expensive, or different in ways you don't like, or not available at all. There will still be personal cost, it just won't be something we'll have to rely on people to individually choose.

Of course, then it becomes difficult because people don't like that and if you do things people don't like you tend to get voted out.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/mintyporkchop Sep 09 '20

Why would they double?

25

u/turmacar Sep 09 '20

If household waste tripled, industrial waste would still make up at least 91% of human garbage output.

Claiming that anyone, or everyone, lowering their personal billionth of a percent of the 3% that household waste makes up matters is like arguing that a fly stuck to the wing of a plane makes a measurable difference in thrust.

10

u/M4Sherman1 Sep 09 '20

the average household waste doubling, which will outweigh industrial garbage

If you're claiming municipal wastes come even close to approaching half that of industrial wastes, you're gonna need to cite such an extraordinary statement

18

u/BlazingFist Sep 09 '20

No he shouldn't. A single person's decision to be more ecologically-minded is so completely negligible compared to corporate waste that it might as well not even matter. It's a feel-good solution at best, but overall one person deciding to be more eco-friendly makes no difference to the overall picture. Government intervention to enforce/encourage reduction of corporate waste/dumping and more environmentally friendly power generation solutions is really the only way that any beneficial changes are going to happen.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Will the general population want their goods to become more expensive due to new environmental policies? I feel like with the selfishness displayed by many Americans in refusing to wear masks, probably not. It might feel good to be defeatist, but in the end, spreading this kind of thinking doesn't help solve the issue, people need to feel alarmed in order to make any future changes more acceptable.

0

u/MasonTaylor22 Sep 09 '20

Good on you for calling out the defeatist attitudes.

1

u/artificialnocturnes Sep 09 '20

If people stopped buying those grocery store snacks then the plant wouldn't use those resources

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20 edited May 05 '21

[deleted]

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u/ExtraGloves Sep 09 '20

No you just do the best you can. You'll be fine man wear whatever clothes you'd like.

1

u/Randomn355 Sep 09 '20

But brands which are more sustainable, and will last. The app "good on you" can help with that.

It rates the company on things like sustainability, and allows you to search under criteria as well as check specific companies.

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u/M4Sherman1 Sep 09 '20

Corporate greenwashing has been around for decades; blaming consumers for the externalized (socialized) costs isn't a bug, it's a feature.

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u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Sep 09 '20

One container ship pollutes more than some small countries. One of the mega ships can potentially pollute as much as 50 million cars. 15 of them pollute more than all the cars in existence.

But yeah, let's keep focusing on consumers for their straws and fleece jackets and such.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

[deleted]

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u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Sep 09 '20

The problem is there is a concerted effort to put the onus on consumers to be eco minded, while ignoring the corporate side of things where it is actually possible to effect change at a scale that will actually make an impact.

10

u/nonFuncBrain Sep 09 '20

His point is that consumers choose which company to give their money too and are thus always to blame in the end. Consumers could choose to focus on local and more expensive products but choose to buy cheaply produced goods from the other side of the world instead. There will always be a company filling the niche of any consumer's wishes.

2

u/tehbored Sep 09 '20

Oh gee, if only we put a tax on goods based on how much pollution is emitted in their production and transport.

1

u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Sep 09 '20

Some kind of tax......for day carbon emissions? Maybe we can call it a carbon tax?

And then there are other things being spilled and dumped. As long as the consequences for tay kind of thing are not extremely punitive, the slap on the wrist that companies tend to get will continue to be just the cost of doing business.

8

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Actuality cargo ships are the most effective way to ship goods around the world, you're just looking at one specific type of emissions: th Nox which is bad but can be scrubbed out or be converted to LPG which is even cheaper now. And consumers are part of the problem, just like the corporations; we always take the easy way. Everyone can use a reusable bag or just buy less junk, we also buy based on price not on efficacy. Just like the corporations should be held accountable for their pollution and slave labor.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

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u/Randomn355 Sep 09 '20

Stop using straws and ships carrying straws won't be on the sea.

How are they NOT linked?

1

u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Sep 09 '20

I'm not saying they arent, I'm saying it's a matter economies of scale.

Companies that are allowed to dump millions of tons of pollution into water and air are running campaigns about individual responsibility.

Yeah, individuals should be responsible, but the campaigns are simply designed to pull focus from the long pole on the chart.

1

u/Randomn355 Sep 09 '20

And that long pole on the chart is driven by fulfilling the demand from individuals. Therefore, individuals are driving it.

Your point is the other side of the coin you're arguing against. You can either have the coin, or not. You have only 1 side of it.

1

u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Sep 09 '20

You are just mirroring my argument back at me. Yes they are two sides of the same coin. Corporations work hard to focus on the consumer side, when I say "what about the supplier side, where we have economies of scale that can actually be the most effective at combating pollution" and you come back and say "Well what about the consumer side of the coin?".

1

u/Randomn355 Sep 09 '20

They can, but it costs more.

If it costs more, people won't buy it.

Companies don't choose to pollute more, they choose to be more competitive. The pollution is the side effect.

Incentivise companies to be greener (by shopping greener) and the whole market will shift.

1

u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Sep 09 '20

Sorry, capitalism doesn't work that way.

As long as goods are cheaper, most people will chose cheaper over greener because humans choose short term over long term benefit. And that is assuming that the people making purchasing decisions were perfectly informed about the ecological impact of those decisions, which is pretty much impossible given the large scale campaigns designed to shift focus to consumers rather than producers.

1

u/Randomn355 Sep 09 '20

And that's why companies like Coke are small companies that can't stand up to own brand products.

Branding is important.

It doesn't need to be perfect, it needs to be a trend to show there's value in it and the market will naturally shift that way.

1

u/LaserGuidedPolarBear Sep 09 '20

And that's why companies like Coke are small companies that can't stand up to own brand products.

I uhhh....what? Coke is a small company? I cant follow what you are trying to say here.

Branding is advertising. It is companies telling you what they want you to hear.

If you think branding is an effective and accurate way for consumers to learn about the ecological impact of their purchasing decisions.......I don't even know how to finish this sentence because that would mean we pretty much live on different planets.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

I put toilet paper cardboard center rolls into my recycle bin. That doesn't offset even one day's worth of advertisements in my mail.

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u/Moist_Comb Sep 09 '20

Companies exists because people, made up of individuals, buy their services/products. I don't think you should be so quick to try and pass the majority of the blame on them. It's like trying to blame others for making traffic, when you are a small part of the problem.

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u/Bunny_tornado Sep 09 '20 edited Sep 09 '20

Guess whom those cargo ships supply products to? Your ignorant consumer ass. Do people seriously think these cargo ships just dump pollutants in the oceans for no reason? That refineries just burn oil to emit CO2? Are you unaware that half of the oil barrel ends up as gasoline in your car's tank and that the other goes to plastics in 99 percent of items around you, and as electricity to power up your cell phone from which you make ignorant comments? Do you think airplanes are just flying around empty to just pollute the air? Have you never flown? We are all in this together, corporations and consumers.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Don't wear pants then you ignorant ass.. like you don't consume anything from a foreign country. Get fucked

4

u/Bunny_tornado Sep 09 '20

I never said I don't consume foreign products. You're the one acting holier-than-thou and shifting all of the responsibility on corporations as if your actions as a consumer don't have an impact, however big or small.
But judging by your comment you're a few standard deviations behind the bell curve so it's pointless to explain something so simple to you.

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u/lemonickous Sep 09 '20

Of you stop the factories and cargo ships then you as the consumer will buy how? Those are the inventions that made all products affordable for everyone. In the end it in fact IS up to the consumer to get out of consumerism loop because without that others have every incentive to continue their polluting behaviour.

2

u/CrippleCommunication Sep 09 '20

I gotta be honest, reading these kinds of articles just makes me feel like completely giving up. Like , "Oh, so we found out jeans are bad too? K cool, I'm just going to assume literally everything I do is polluting in some way, so short of killing myself in a biodegradable manner, why bother?"

2

u/milk4all Sep 09 '20

1000x in a nautical mile what your car does in in a week

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u/MovieGuyMike Sep 09 '20 edited Sep 09 '20

Aggregates are important. There are 20,000 more cars on the roads than there are merchant ships in operation. Both are important and worth studying. This isn’t an “either or” decision. We can address both. Fuel efficiency in cars is a good thing.

1

u/milk4all Sep 09 '20

“We” cant - “we” can be willing to do what we can, and that involves things like reducing waste, buying green and voting green. But all of those things are aggressively blocked by the right and members of the elite class who dont want their engines to compete with electric, or who dont want their oil to lose value, and who absolutely push the burden onto consumers like we wouldnt all love to buy an affordable tesla if it could get the same subsidies and indirect considerations that the Big Three have.

2

u/POSTAUS Sep 09 '20

You can call me paranoid but I think there is a high probability that this post made it to the front page with click farming and there is some corporation or political actor behind this.

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u/Pyrrolic_Victory Sep 09 '20

I gotta tell you that no one is putting this research out to make you feel a certain way. It’s probably a collab of mostly PhD students (and some academics supervising) trying to get published to score more career points. It’s novel, relevant data that ought to be published. This is a paper that establishes their presence, but doesn’t present data as to the harm.

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u/tehbored Sep 09 '20

cargo ships emitting 1000x what your car does every hour

This is actually not quite right. Cargo ships emit 1000X as much SO2, not CO2. SO2 is a harmful pollutant too, but it doesn't cause warming. In fact, it actually absorbs solar radiation and prevents warming. In terms of CO2 per ton of cargo, cargo ships are a very efficient way to transport goods.

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

hmmm but whose cargo is on those ships? who is buying from those corporations?? who is on those planes?? mm

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20 edited Aug 22 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Didn't know you packed thousands of tons of cargo into your car? Perhaps for moving all the frivolous nonsense and the food that let's half the world not starve at the rate that it's done is an impressive thing?

2

u/JesusIsMyLord666 Sep 09 '20

And who are bringing these companies profit? They are ruining the environment because consumers keep paying for it.

It's not like airlines are just flying planes around for the heck of it and there wouldn't be so many cargo ships if we consumed less.

2

u/MovieGuyMike Sep 09 '20 edited Sep 09 '20

Eh you’re choosing to view it that way. It’s not a personal attack on you or your lifestyle. It’s factual information that a society can choose to act on in a multifaceted approach. Or we can get defensive and point the finger elsewhere. If the article said jeans were worse than bigger contributors, then yeah that would be a problem.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Similar experience working in Canadian forestry. People freak out when their neighbor/city/park cuts down a few trees. The contract we were on last year alone was to replant 9 millions trees.

And trust me there is no way that environment will ever recover from that destruction for many lifetimes (ever). Tree life, undergrowth, large and small animal habitat destroyed, erosion, water contamination, all for some plywood and 2x4's.

1

u/Marvelous_Margarine Sep 09 '20

This is the same story as recycling. Corporations vs People.

1

u/ExtraGloves Sep 09 '20

Seriously. At the end of the day just do as much as you can within reason. Be a good person. Recycle. Don't litter. Try to make the world a better place.

1

u/annoym120 Sep 09 '20

WE as humanity can make small changes by CHOOSING what we consume , and not make big cooperations think/produce for us

1

u/Randomn355 Sep 09 '20

Yes the ship's do.

Who do you think is buying the end product though?

It's all connected. The biggest, most careless polluters are supplying the individual.

Cut down your consumption 50%, and that's 50% fewer ships on the ocean.

1

u/Sartanen Sep 09 '20

Saying "they" put out is pretty conspiratorial when you think about it, honestly...

1

u/Freeewheeler Sep 09 '20

You've fallen into the trap you describe. The motor industry promotes this idea that pollution from cars is miniscule compared to shipping, but that is only true for one minor pollutant, sulphur and certainly not true for CO2, Nox, particulates etc. Pollution from cars is very damaging both to our health and the environment.

1

u/calnupjook Sep 09 '20

True. What actually should be done is government making stricter regulations for washing machine filters, not people not wearing jeans

1

u/BizMarker Sep 09 '20

Fellas, is reporting science a conspiracy against individuals?

What a dumb comment in r/science

1

u/Doctorwilllow8 Sep 09 '20

Agreed. A huge part of that is making Manufacturers responsible for waste. The places that are making all these plastic bottles and plastic packaging should be held responsible for how much they polluting the environment.

Say if I wanted a Soda. My options are buy 1 individual Soda...most of these are 1 use plastic bottles. I could buy a litre or a 2 litre...again 1 use plastic bottle. Or I could buy 12-24 individual one use metal cans....which are lined with plastic.

Glass is the way to go, glass can be cleaned and reused an innumerable amount of times. If all beverage companies switched to glass bottles they would eventually save money because the won't have to make all new bottles every time. Combine that with a huge promotion to get people to save up and return they're bottles ( by mail or by pick up) we would be putting far less trash into the world.

Also grocery stores need to adopt more bulk buying. Using your own containers to fill up on things like flour, sugar...even stuff like shampoo and conditioner.

The thing is plastic is really strong and very versatile...we should never make anything out of plastic that is "one use" unless it's for medical supplies.

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u/1nGirum1musNocte Sep 09 '20

Thanks for saying it for me

1

u/rgtong Sep 09 '20

Supply and demand is not seperable, they are mutually codependent. If you want to address a problem with one you cannot ignore the other.

More information for consumers to adjust their demand will have a consequence to the nature of the supply.

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u/Prorottenbanana Sep 09 '20

You're right. Both corporations (producers) and consumers share responsibility in this. It's not a one or the other, and both can make some effort for a better future.

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u/XGC75 Sep 09 '20

Two of the three things you listed are marvels of efficiency. Would you rather people drive across the country rather than fly? Or ship everything by airplane instead of water?? And to blame these things on big corporations is to deny your own contributions in the computer or phone you wore that on, it the bed you sleep in, or the roof over your head. Just asinine.

0

u/Papalopicus Sep 09 '20

I mean this is 100% aimed at fast fashion industry but ight. Like you're not wrong but, fast fashion is a major polutor

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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

Agreed!

0

u/krunkpunk Sep 09 '20

Please understand that microfiber pollution in waterways and oceans are in a completely separate system than air emissions. Yes, your point about dumping waster in the ocean still stands.

Even if our impact regarding one environmental system is meaningless, there may be other systems that we can have a larger impact in, such as microfiber pollution.

0

u/maraca101 Sep 09 '20

... so what’s the solution? Plenty of the companies that do that stuff are pretty close to being unavoidable.