Anticonsumer
Posted by user u/Sanchoironwood710 “Graphic by Instagram uses @boringfriends”
The importance of being for
Anti-over-consumption
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DeTrashed/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DumpsterDiving/
Sort posts by “top of the year” or “all time” and review and you’ll change how you live.
This post isn’t meant to be anti-capitalist but to see the failures of capitalism you need to look no further than Geauga Lake or perhaps the Longaberger basket Factory building? Pretty sure communism didn’t do that, therefore capitalism is also not perfect. The point being, when you hear the argument that capitalism is the only system that works, that doesn’t mean it is a system without severe unchecked corruption compared to other systems. Yes, you must cut your losses when you are in a for-profit business-like Cedar Fair did with Geauga (which was long destined for failure to begin with). When the iconic basket factory building is no longer necessary for your company although iconic and “should have been in the forever plan or never built” the now defunct company left an embarrassing failure behind. Personally, I love iconic buildings like the Longaberger building, but how these people at the top do not organize the accounting in a way that keeps the company and building going is beyond my understanding. Sure, baskets are ancient history and nobody uses them anymore but the failure to innovate is not the public’s fault. In this country it is apparently better to abandon buildings and amusement parks than it is to be public with your needs before you sink the business entirely.
There isn’t a bigger heartbreak than Geauga Lake for Northeast Ohio, besides the failure of the steel industry staying in Northeast Ohio, i.e. Youngstown, Cleveland, Akron, Canton. Was it not better for Cedar Fair to scrap and sell the rides and take a loss on the property itself? Why wouldn’t you make a mini park (since much of Geauga’s failure is attributed to “too big to maintain”) or go retro and make it a picnic park again and build an outdoor amphitheater like Blossom something smaller to turn a profit and stay open rather than be the wasteland it is today?
The city and township should have done more to prevent this atrocity from happening, you have to wonder if failure was ever discussed when plans were drawn to build this park. The same concern lies with the Pro Football Hall of Fame, its well known that Canton doesn’t meet the LA or Orlando standard of attractiveness, if the Hall of Fame Village fails will it be a wasteland like Geauga Lake? I hope the protections are in place but I’m sure they’re not! Plus how do you hold a company liable for abandoning a property if the company fails entirely?
So who cares right? What can we the average Joe do about it?
#1 vote local people out of office that fumble a major deal or don’t hold certain companies accountable for their actions locally. Generally, there is nothing we can realistically do day to day for the grand problems because by the time we find out about it we’re defeated already.
I suppose for Geauga, a fund should be set up with a 10 year goal to buy and clear the property. It should be turned into a state park and left to grow. Crowdfunding has achieved more with less time so it is possible and would take a major group effort. Any effort now would be better than the zero effort that has occurred.
More about our daily lives, yes it’s a joke to use a metal straw when Taylor Swift doesn’t like being tracked and reported on for her 10 minute flight. In other words why are we caring about what straws we use when the rich & famous use their private jets with a mega carbon footprint just to go to the grocery store.
Doing nothing at all is a bigger joke, so I use the metal straw, every time? No. But I still TRY!
Laws should define what “reasonable use” is and hold these private jet owning people accountable for excess consumption. You had to abuse Earth and your well-deserved privileges so now we’ve made a law to hold you accountable and if you don’t like it, leave.
Your money isn’t going to mean shit when Earth’s food chain fails and if we don’t try to care, life for all will never get better. Single use plastics or even recyclable plastic, Milk jugs for example, you have to try to find a second use for them. I told Andrew hey save the milk jugs we get I’d like to paint them turn them into bird feeders or dog food/cat litter scoops etc, I never instructed him to wash it out first before saving and I found a bunch of milk jugs with a tiny bit of spoiled milk in each ew!!! Funny mistake and he heard my lecture for sure. Milk jugs are something most homes have in their fridge, and these are great for reuse at home. Container gardening, bird houses, bird feeders, scoops with a built in handle, watering can, stackable toys for kids, what can you shape a milk jug into?
Last summer, we went to Edgewater Beach in Cleveland Ohio and during the day we had gotten drinks at McDonald’s, plastic cups, drinks, lids, for shame! At the beach, we used the now empty cups to attempt to build sandcastles with and at the very least the girls enjoyed digging and dumping the tiny shell/pebble heavy sand. At the very least I didn’t have to buy toys and the girls had fun reusing the cups!
As a mom I understand I had a part in giving our children life. I feel like I didn’t do much except exist but some moms really do give it their all, uprooting their entire lives just to grow a baby and so many moms try and are not blessed with a child and that is so depressing. They are still a mom just for trying they should know that. Of course there are always other ways to parent, to mentor, to care for other living beings and those people are moms too! The point is to intervene, to try, to do something that maintains life or gives second life. People might frown at your 50 milk jugs handing from a tree housing birds and feeding them, but this is the land of the free and within reason you are free to do what you want. I am sure a city or HOA code would freak out over milk jugs but if you are creative and camouflage it, who would know?
We had milk jug feeders, bright yellow and undecorated on wire coat hangers just hanging outside our country home when I was growing up and looking back the look was as trashy looking as it could be. The jugs would also bang into our living room windows too! Do you know what though? We had woodpeckers, robins, blue jays, warblers, chickadees, starlings, crows all visit us right at our living room windows. You cannot beat the therapy of nature! So I don’t care if someone doesn’t understand but to avoid a city fine I will camouflage the damn thing and hide it so I can still enjoy my feathered friends in the city. Here are some great examples of giving a second life to something:
One year we didn’t have an angel for the top of the Christmas Tree and an in-law carved one out of the energy drink can and we celebrated that way. I’ve seen the beer can angels before but I just thought it was neat to actually do that.
Consider what you can save from your trash, don’t be a hoarder but think about what you can give a second life to. Pasta jars are great for reuse, use them for rinsing paintbrushes, take them to the beach and collect shells and sea glass. Make tea light lanterns with your old pasta jars. Google “soup can crafts” and see what you can do. An old wine bottle secured to a sturdy stick, lamp oil and rope, - tiki torch.
Artists are buying old drawers, repairing the sliding function of the drawer, repainting the drawer entirely with modern style and reselling at a huge profit.
How can one person or one household make a difference?
-reduce consumption of plastic in general, go with glass or metal if available and recycle
-create a compost pile if you have the room
- 1 Sunday a month, wear high visibility clothing, detrash an outdoor area over the span of 4 hours. Take before and after pics, not to get the attention but to show your own self how much of a difference you made that day.
-Reduce your consumption of fast food to 1-2 times a month. If that is too severe try to take little steps and reduce more and more over time. You’ll save money and be healthier for it and you’re not creating more waste.
-Learn to properly recycle, contact your local recycling center and ask what their preferences are. Do you need to wash containers? Take labels off etc.
-If you have room or a basement create a sorting storage area for recycling and clean it out once a month, take it on the day you detrash an area. For example, I’d reuse old pallets and make bins that will hold plastics, one would hold cardboard, and one would hold metals. I’d load these bins up on detrash day and drop it off on my way to/from the area. Hopefully I get this achieved this year.
Browsing reddit I became more aware of all the things we throw out that maybe we can repurpose or at least try to send to recycling. Let the recyclers throw it out the sin is on them at that point but of course do everything you can to recycle properly.
It might seem silly but if you monitored your trash for a week and wrote down what you threw out - I know its silly - but you'd be aware of what single use products you are buying and you can change how you purchase items to be more earth friendly. Make wiser choices in the store, strawberries for example, either buy the plastic container or a biodegradable container. Compare the prices and see if it is affordable to you. See if container gardening tomatoes and strawberries is right for you it is very minimal effort.
Can you spend 15 minutes and walk for 1/2 mile to spot pickup an area that you walk at? Ok I'm walking at ____park today, I'm going to look for 5 things I can pick up and dispose of.
Little changes add up. You weren't picking up before right? Right. So 15 minutes 2x a week, you need to get out and walk anyway as the doctor says.
5 things. Gum wrapper, pop can, bag, newspaper, straw.
If you did that twice a week, you could eliminate up to 520 littered things a year.
Stark county's population is about 373,834 if 75% took a walk twice a week and picked up 5 things, then 72,897,630 items could be picked up in one year.
If 5% of Stark did that, up to 5,000,000 things could be picked up in one year.
