Ask: Is money spent a good approximation for ecological impact?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42568823

by robocat • 2 years ago

2 3 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

We are bombarded with cultural opinions about the ecological impact of various goods and services: often with an implicit good versus bad.

It seems to me that too often that an unbiased view shows that the facts suggest the actual green solution is not what our culture suggests.

The best proxy I have found for making ecological decisions is actually the amount spent on a good or service. Q1: is this a reasonable approximation?

I also think that usually the ecological impact is indirect rather than a naive look at the actual good or service (e.g. plastic bags are better for the environment). Plus I believe it is okay that we all spend our fair share of environmental cost to survive and enjoy ourselves (I'm not a fan of authoritarian rules nor am I a fan of the most obvious means of population control, nor killing myself).

From the above, I assume my ecological impact is actually approximately my income: therefore if I want to have less ecological impact I would need to spend a proportion of my income directly on something with direct ecologically positive outcomes. Q2: what are the most effective ways to spend money directly on ecologically positive outcomes?

anenefan2• 2 years ago

I'm unsure what you exactly mean by cultural opinions but I'll take it to mean along the lines of either - popular public opinion or popular opinion as per the media and shadow players with maybe, other agendas.

There are differing ideas how good or bad our activities are, but not everything is black and white as portrayed by whatever media/ PR body or spokesperson championing a cause.

Certainly various lifestyles have differing ecological impacts even though it may not be very obvious and or may be time dependent ie involving long periods.

For the average person I think it's more of question of not how much is spent, but ensuring value for money - not wasting money having to replace items that used to longer life and or service intervals. At some point the powers that be, do have to get involved in regard to any industry that's less concerned with the waste they are contributing to and more with their profit margin.

To give an example, when synthetic tarps first arrived on the scene for public consumption here in Australia around the late 80s, I found they competed above and beyond the older canvas types, not just on price, but not having to worry about keeping the tarp dry for storage, and they were light meaning they were easy to transport and handle, easy to put up and being lightweight achieving a near flat surface was easy, and were excellent for creating a dry work area underneath where even in a long wet season. So it was for who knows how long, local stores stopped selling canvas tarps, the plastic and quality of new tarps began to undermine just how good the original products were ... move forward thirty years, what's available as plastic tarps from local stores is IMO just rubbish, there's slightly better ones for higher (much) cost but they're still generally rubbish since their service lifetime might actually be a couple of years under Australia's harsh sun. From what I've seen, most can't be pulled into a flat out from new due to poor design, more often the sides are too weak where the eyes are attached ... not that that really matters, the big stumbling block is they are not waterproof for very long, waterproof status can be counted in weeks though less well made ones days is more often ... and then typically after a few months in service, the tarp will show signs it's not at all coping with the harsh sun. I found out the hard way, I'd had a couple of the older tarps from about 1990, they lasted about 12 years, and so then bought a number of large tarps expecting the same. From the first day the clues were there, stretching meant the stitched sides became shorter than the tarps actual width and in 6 months I had half a ton of rubbish not fit for service (as in any pieces that were still in one section were not fit to even keep the weather off) and sat around in a large car sized pile of mess for a number of years while I wondered how if any of it might be one day useful or repurposed ... eventually at some point the only simple option was landfill.

Move to other plastic products present day - yes despite the rinse and repeat here in Australia, there are still store bought gazebos, marquees and various sun shades for cars etc sold to the public here with (often white) not really all that uv resistant plastic sheeting that barely last 6 weeks in the sun - it should be outlawed pure and simple, but it's hard because more often products marketed are hit and run, new brand will say uv resistant but the rubbish dies the same. Things are changing, in stores I'm starting to see a few of these types of shade products making a point they use fabric ...

robocat• 2 years ago

Yeah - popular opinion is probably a better neutral word.

I do look for quality/value however that usually requires costly effort to learn how to decern. Buying good second hand stuff is sound.

My questions are likely poorly formed - maybe I need to write an article to force myself to be more specific.

The cheap plastic tarps are a good example - they fall apart from UV then rip and leave blue plastic threads everywhere. I'm not sure what the right substitute product is!

anenefan2• 2 years ago

Well present times, finding good or value, a lot of products and services are pot luck since many companies are walking away from standing behind their brand - even concepts like oh that product was the grey version / market ...

Plastic tarps over my way, most are cheap even if a large amount of money is shelled out. I doubt anyone in the northern parts of Australia can say they're still got a store purchased one that's still fit for purpose and been in use for 2 years out in the weather. There's of course better tarps are about, more often custom made from tough vinyl and similar and not something one would find in regular hardware stores here for bulk purchase.

Getting back to your original questions, I guess you mean along the lines if one pays more money for nearly identical products or services, the more expensive version has some (supposed or imagined) overall benefit - eg free range eggs at supermarkets will be more expensive than caged eggs. That's not by accident, marketers know or look for real or imagined value that may help move more of the product at an increased asking price.

From the ecological impact we as people might impart while we live, it's less about money, more about what we do with things we've bought and how we dispose of them, and if considering the atmosphere and oceans remain close to their current state, include (as a cost of sorts to the environment) the amount of extra net carbon (fossil carbon minus recycled carbon) they've directly consumed and contributed to.

I would also add, don't get too caught up in purposely spending money on ecological projects that are not guaranteed long term prospects, like more than 50 years if not forever - I've seen too many good intentions that people have spent years, decades, greening up and helping capture carbon by planting trees, more often as a by product for visual improvement purposes around cities and suburbia as well as providing cool areas and shade reducing heat and thus cooling measures like air conditioning units, undone very quickly by a few clowns in local authorities who knee jerk in response of legal suits or appeasing the it's not native crowd. There's also been those who've invested in shared tree plantations whether timber or other end products, only for the project to struggle (not return great profits) to be sold on - more often into the hands of developers who raze the entire effort, 20 .. 30 years more or less down the drain.

Most of us are on a path set by manufacturers and their marketing and the rule makers, sometimes it makes sense there was better, sometimes it's just bonkers.

I can describe a case of bonkers from first hand - I have spent most of my life in or around rural farming areas and the first instance of a widespread recycling program, apart from glass bottles used for milk and softdrink, was for plastic 50 kg / 100 pound fertiliser bags. Farmers often used a few ton of fertiliser a year to supplement nitrogen needs for their crop, so would have emptied a great quantity of bags. They were opened with care as an agent of the fertiliser company would come around to collect them if they had a great amount of these bags - they were refilled and re used until they wore out, often though damage. Then during the 90s it was more typical farmers used 1 ton bags of fertiliser and once more these were wanted by the fertiliser company so they could refill and reuse them. As some point in the last 20 years, that practice was banned - these bags are now single use though the plastic material seems undamaged by removing the contents. The bags now do have big warning labels attached to them not to be refilled (I guess for some other purpose, with something else that's dense like soil or sand) Since the bags are single use, and no recycling program exists, many just get burned since the landfill fee is too high for near broke farmers.

Ask: Is money spent a good approximation for ecological impact?

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