The fishing gets me. I used to fish from the shoreline a lot, but when I went snorkeling in a couple of beautiful places in the world all the lost tackle and line just made me angry at my past self. It's very hard to fish from the shoreline without leaving trash everywhere.

It's hard to think that every dollar I spent on tackle was a dollar I spent polluting the shoreline. It was out of sight, so it was out of mind.

I remember this incredible natural aquarium, formed in a wide, deep circular depression of a coral reef. And a single 30m piece of neon line riiight through the middle of it. Doubtless, it was left by a fisherman who swore at losing another $2 sinker, with no concept of what else they'd just done.

It's thinking like this that led me down the path of rejecting money/currency for the most part. Every dollar I spent is a vote for producing more of whatever I'm buying, directly correlated with habitat loss (for humans included) and animal deaths. And each transaction is like a curtain from behind which the finished product appears, handed to you with no information about its origin.

Yes, finished products abstract away how they were made. But that's why we have labels. Also, taxing the inputs if they're harmful.

Politics can change the rules, having impact that individual purchase decisions can't, because we don't have the information.

What does this even mean? By ones existence one precludes other life. Where does one draw the line on what one can eat/use?

I sometimes feel these statements are made without much critical thinking. I’m open to be proved wrong.

That's an interesting perspective. How does such an approach play out in practice?

The freeganism link in sibling comment provides a pretty good overview.

In my case, I live outdoors more than half the time, sometimes couchsurfing.

I obtain food primarily from waste.

My electronics are hand-me-downs.

For getting around, I ride with people going my way or walk. I am a careful driver, and sometimes I help drive as contribution. Sometimes I ride trains and buses, which cost minimal money.

I pay a few hundred a year for domains and hosting.

Occasionally, people offer me money. I used to not accept it, but now I just do my best to limit its use to the above.

If I go to a coffee shop, I typically do not buy a coffee. If I sit at a fast food place, I don't buy anything.

I do not feel that I owe anything to anyone just for occupying space.

I do, however, place some properly logoed cups (reused) on my table, and I pick up any trash on the floors, and fix the chairs, and sometimes wipe the tables with abandoned napkins.

It seems kind of silly sometimes, but it's a system that's working well for me now.

I like to visit libraries, though hours are typically limited.

It has taken me about 5 years to transition to this life from full-time job, apartment, and cat.

I had previous camping experience, and a relatively low regard for social norms. I am a man, which obviously helps with safety. But women do it too.

This practice has helped me develop my meditation practice, write more code I can be proud of, and travel without worry about where I'm going to stay when I get there.

Because my past jobs contributed to selling soft drinks, securities, oil, etc., I think that my "environmental karma" is much better. I also have the time to stop and pick up the trash everywhere I go, a practice I find to be both enjoyable and great "natural" exercise.

I’m honestly curious and not trying to be contrarian - what does your code produce if not more consumption in some way?

Well, it is not producing much at the moment, and it is consuming electricity and resources to run.

I am hoping that it will produce a better way for people to talk and connect, as well as provably reliable information store.

This is why I prefer spear fishing (free diving style especially), yes it’s harder work, yes there are dangers; But it’s not only visually attractive but you can be much more selective about the fish you take and there is almost never anything left behind, unless you had to drop a weight belt in an emergency or something, which I’ve never actually needed to do though it happens.

Often I actually take tack home I find and dispose of it properly.

I've always wanted to try spearfishing, it seems like a real sport, unfortunately it's banned in my country.

I seem to remember working for a pharmacy years ago and disposing of packing peanuts by putting them in the sink and dissolving them with hot water. Is that not a thing anymore?

Starch-based packing peanuts are will break down in water, unlike their polystyrene equivalents.

Some packing peanuts are apparently made of puffed up rice. It's a fun trick to pull on coworkers who don't know this and eat a bunch when you get a package.

as long as they're not imported and have been sprayed with pesticide.

Apparently the majority of the carbohydrates and nutrients have been removed too, probably not tasty without the pesticide zest.

My local recycling center (in the SF Bay Area) accepts styrofoam blocks (though the machine is down right now). Unfortunately, storing and transporting bulky styrofoam is cumbersome for individuals, so it's not very scalable.

https://www.el-cerrito.org/952/Drop-Off-Materials-Accepted

"Fees apply for customers from outside El Cerrito"

I wonder why? Sounds like it's impractical to recycle.

"Fees apply for customers from outside El Cerrito"

Maybe it's funded by the city, so it would be free for people there, since they've already paid for with their taxes?

acetone will melt huge polystyrene foam block into a small puddle

Paper is an amazing technology.

Were I king, I'd massively fund R&D to bring new sources of fiber to market. Make them competitive with wood pulp.

Hemp, bamboo, sugar cane, feed corn. Maybe even invasive (noxious) weeds like kudzu. Two birds, one stone.

Extra credit for non till harvesting techniques. Just mow those hemp fields. Then do it all again in three months.

Wood-pulping can also be a filthy technology. Growing up in a paper-mill town meant smelling and breathing the particulate and gaseous effluents of the cooking process. In the spring, the remnants of this deluge covered all the melting snow-piles in a black sheet. (And lungs?) Much of what didn't come out of the stacks flowed out under the river's surface through a secret pipe. Downstream, the shores were matted and bubbling with discarded wastes.

As for the hundreds of men who 'harvested' the trees ... laboring in the gulag wilderness, far from the cities where the paper for fiduciary reports, magazines, academic wisdom and signage is consumed ... most lived marginalized lives of quiet desperation. Even if they managed to make it to retirement with whole bodies.

You are correct.

I infrequently do some light googling to see if anyone is seriously trying to use bamboo or hemp for paper and fabrics. This was the biggest hit last time.

http://www.bamboopulp.com

For future, I'll be mindful of the labor and ecological impacts of their processes.

Thank you.

I recently learned that many of the things we make out of plastic today were once made of paper.

I don't mean bags and plates and stuff. I mean big things like tables, and reusable bowls, and snuff boxes. A lot of them can still be found in antique shops 150 years later.

>Straws are a very small part of that and a weird thing to fixate on relative to all the other one time use food waste we generate.

Straws are completely superfluous. If you take away my straw I can continue drinking the beverage. Chips need a container, sure I'd prefer more bulk bins and recycled containers, but if we banned plastic containers for chips you interfere mightily in someone enjoying their product.

ANYWAYS, the fixation is from the bad actors, the trouble makers, the noisemakers.

Most people's teeth are sensitive to cold. They like to use straws to be able skip the teeth while ingesting a cold beverage. This is why the straw was invented -- to make it easy to consume icy cold drinks.

Very strange that this must be explained to people who think straws are completely superfluous. If they were superfluous, people wouldn't be using them. This is a great example of Chesterton's Fence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

Unfortunately this is a widespread problem that dominates environmental activism in privileged wealthy countries. I wouldn't necessarily call the Straw Banners "Bad Actors" or "Trouble Makers", just foolish people. You have people venturing into areas they know nothing about and suddenly start trying to ban things before even understanding what the issues are. Serious people know that reducing plastic use or the production of plastics is not the issue, but having secure disposal systems is how you keep garbage out of the ocean. Moreover, the problem is almost entirely in the third world where secure disposal systems don't exist. Nothing that you do or don't consume here is going to make a difference in terms of what ends up in the ocean.

You are wrong regarding disposal of plastic. Most of developed world does not recycle its plastic, we ship it to China or Philippines, where its sorted by hand, or illegally burned and land filled. Often it is shipped there illegally by our own governments. Recently China stopped taking contaminated plastic, and much more of it now ends up in even poorer countries. Many kinds of plastic are 'unrecycleable' at all, like most plastic bags and films. Some are recyclable (like plastic bottles) but uneconomic to sort from the grades of plastic that aren't, from each-other, and from random food contamination. No country in the world has achieved good track record of recycling plastic, and it probably impossible without very tight control and discipline.

Unrecycleable plastic in single use items should be illegal.

www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-48455440

You roll your lower lip over your bottom front teeth, bring the container to your mouth, and pour the liquid into your mouth while gently resting the lip of the container on your lip.

Girls need straws for lipstick, guys need straws for beards, elderly need straws for health concerns.

They aren't "completely superfluous".

People don't need lipstick, lickstick is superfluous.

I've never needed a straw while drinking and I facial hair, but I guess personal anecdotes are useless, and cleaning your face occasionally with a napkin(or a sleeve) is... forbidden?

As for the elderly, if your health requires you to use a straw why are you relying on someone else to meet your needs? You should provide your own straws if drinking without a straw is a health concern, right? Someone with a peanut allergy shouldn't rely on the restaurant to have an epi-pin.

Agree, with enough dedication we can remove our reliance on anything. Coffee, tv, internet, phones, straws, bananas...

Still doesn't mean it is a good idea or that it will solve anything.

More in specific, we can remove straws from our life (you can also claim that all the noise about it raised public awareness), but when Starbucks solution is to use even more plastic in their lids, McDonald's solution are paper straws that cannot be recicled and raise a huge controversy for focusing on something silly I am not sure it was a net ecological win.

Single use lids are next.

We're destroying the environment because we can't be assed to take a break to have a drink.

We are not "destroying the environment" and you are not going to "save the environment".

This is childish. Nations which don't have good sanitation systems are dumping garbage into the oceans, as are ships. Your attempt to self-flagellate, or more accurately flagellate others by abstaining from straws does not help or hurt the environment. It does annoy people and cause resentment and blowback that might stop useful engineering solutions, though. It's a type of modern religious ritual meant to absolve yourself of invented sins because you think you have something to do with plastic in the oceans when the real culprits are thousands of miles away.

If you want to clean up the oceans, try to find a way to provide asian and african nations with secure sanitation systems, and to improve the sanitation handling on ships. Container ships are quite dirty also because of the sulfur being burned. Lots of potential solutions that don't have anything to do with personal abnegation -- it may not feel as good, but for that you should go to church or synagogue rather than trying to invent your own eco-shamanism. The environment is improved by engineering solutions and development in the third world, not by acts of personal purity in the wealthy west.

> It's a type of modern religious ritual meant to absolve yourself of invented sins...

Nail on the head.

Most people don't need them.

Some people are switching to metal straws, while some restaurants are using dry pasta straws (the pasta doesn't go soft as the drinks are cold).

There are alternatives for those that need them.

> L.A. will prohibit all restaurants and vendors from handing out plastic straws unless requested effective Oct. 1. Councilman Mitch O’Farrell says people don’t even need a straw to drink a smoothie. “Just have them blend it a little thinner.”

https://twitter.com/webdevMason/status/1178911679846871045?s...

> Straws are a very small part of that and a weird thing to fixate on relative to all the other one time use food waste we generate.

People always fixate on things they personally touch and see, over things that are out of sight even if they're thousand or million times bigger factors.

Thus all the frenzy around straws, shopping bags, coffee mugs etc.