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a friend of mine who spends a LOT of his time picking up plastic waste from parks, rivers, streets, etc. had a good idea. He decided to photograph the non biodegradable waste and tag companies on social media with it. So if he finds a plastic Subway cup, he tells Subway about it with the message "is this yours?" I dig this because it's not something that blames the consumer. It puts the blame where it belongs: on the producer.

A consumer might put a couple of pieces of trash into the environment every month, but a producer could put out tens of thousands.

@interneteh this sounds like #Litterati, although I'm not sure how much shaming they've done yet.

@interneteh so you think that people who litter in the parks shouldn't be blamed? 🤔

@gdr what I'm saying is obvious. litter all day and night and you won't have the same impact as one company that decided to go with plastic over something that biodegrades. it's a question of scale.

@gdr @interneteh legislation can also be introduced for greater punishments for littering

@interneteh @TQ I remember a thing back in the nineties when McDonald’s was the first fast food company to come to rural Germany. The towns where they wanted to open a restaurant tried to make McDonald’s use glass and plates instead of plastic. They knew that they’d have a litter problem.

Didn’t work out in the end, but they blamed the company at least.

@interneteh

That does not make sense. Clearly the blame is on the person who littered. How on earth is it Subway’s fault if someone throws their cup on the ground?

@jonw they decide what cups to put in people's hands. one that decays in a year or one that won't decay for 1,000 years

@interneteh

Your friend would have a point if they went to a landfill. But blaming subway because some rando threw a subway cup on the ground is a non sequitur.

@jonw you're not great at thinking systemically are you

@interneteh
Dude! That is so cool! I should start doing that! 😀

@interneteh
Meh. My actual day job is litter picking. I can tell you that they already know of their environmental impact and people can already see the branding. The issue is one of consumer alienation from the environment around them combined with a society that is constantly throwing shit away. Private companies have a hand in this all of course, partly in even being the ones to create said alienation in the first place. That said, you're not gonna save the rivers by @ing subway on twitter to say their plastic cup lids are pollution

@CornishRepublicanArmy @interneteh

Nobody's going to save the rivers with one single action.

But what this person is doing is bearing witness.

Recognising that companies are choosing to provide cups designed to be thrown away after a single use.

Showing that there are consequences to that choice.

We just get numbed to things as a culture, stop seeing them because it's easier not to, so bearing witness is important.

@interneteh
I like what he's doing there.
And yes, blame shurly belongs to the producer. But I don't see that this would mean that it exclusionary belongs to them.
Customers are those that bring in the value to produce all that crap.
Customers are those that build that shit through working in those companies.
There're some that don't know better.
There're other that know about the damage, but they continue.

And yes, there are alternatives we can choose from. So we're also in responsible to do it.

@paulfree14 individual responsibility exists, but I'd argue it shouldn't be the focus

@interneteh
if you understand the customers as a group, or the worker as a class it can be behond individual aproaches.

for example:
#CSA: community supported acriculture

@paulfree14 That's not wrong, but all I'm saying it we can make hundreds of millions of individual decisions of a couple hundred decisions. Where the power lies here is clear.

@interneteh
yes. but I believe if we don't change those powerdynamics, it rather soon or later lead to similiar issues.

that's the reason I disagree with you on the point that the focus shall be the producer, except if that means to overtake the production.

I say, yes we shall focus on changing the production side.
But I'm also sayn we shall focus on changing the redistribution of the existing/created value.

@paulfree14 I feel like we're overcomplicating the original point, but ok.

@interneteh @paulfree14 the ways both of you suggest to deal with issue are far too small scale and individualist. 'responsibility' is meaningless and boils things down to the idea of individuals commuting actions, which of course is what is happening, but fails to understand the true scope of things.

when people litter and when companies pollute, none of that is the specific person doing a single action, it's all a product of a long series of actions and social attitudes that build those actions. I can tell you for a fact that white middle class areas in London are full of FAR less litter, and this is not due to a lack of shops in those areas, it's down to sociology at work. people who are far more well off tend to have more social cohesion, tend to care far more about where they live and tend to have more of the energy and or time to take care of their communities.

demanding Subway clean their shit up through shame, or demanding they have a change of packaging policy is a tincy drop in the bucket when it comes to these companies. they're profit motivated, and naming and shaming will not impact that profit margin I promise you, you can go down any major metropolitan centre and see all the shit on the floor outside a McDonalds, is that stopping a flurry of customers come 12:30? nope, and neither will 'attempting to highlight the issue'. those who care already care, and those who don't will continue to do as they do, there's no gospel of litter to proselytize to the people to get them to use Rational Choice(tm) to put pressure on these brands, the vast Vast majority of litter is because people are alienated from their environment, and they are alienated from their environment due to capitalism.

you cannot simply solve the sociological issues of capitalism by either getting local communities to just fix it, nor can you use a mass campaign of awareness to get individual companies to 'make a difference' (even though, people would still litter in their tonnes). all you can do is end capitalism to end the huge amounts of alienation it causes that leads to issues like this the way it does crime, abuse, mental health, ect

@CornishRepublicanArmy @paulfree14 I definitely believe the systemic approach is always the best approach. And asking companies nicely is always gonna be limited in its effectiveness. Still I thought this was a better idea than most I have heard on the subject, when limiting the conversation to non-systemic solutions. Working with property relations being what they are, y'know.

@interneteh @paulfree14 it's attempting to use ethical consumption to fix a shortfall in capitalism. yeah, you feel like it's doing something, and on some microscopic level it does 'something', but really all it does is let people feel they're making a difference when they're not