Is it just me who finds that people try to challenge eco changes?!

[firstimemamma]

Hi, first time I've started a thread so please be gentle!

I just wanted to share my frustration and see if anyone else feels the same.

I'm no eco warrior but have recently started making small changes to try to reduce my carbon footprint and plastic footprint.

I would never try to force what I do on anyone else but am finding my efforts thrown back in my face a lot of the time!

For example if I bring Tupperware boxes to the butchers there is always a man behind the till who makes it as hard as he can for me to use them instead of their plastic bags. Lots of eye rolling and sarcastic "so you think you're saving the planet?" type comments.

In Starbucks I got a drink-in mug instead of a takeaway plastic cup, but when I receive my order I find that my milk comes in a separate single-use plastic pot next to my cup. It just seems so wasteful to me!

There have been many times when I've been made to feel difficult just by using my own shopping bag or declining a printed receipt.

I find it sad that by making even small changes to my lifestyle, I'm being made to feel like I'm really going against the grain.

Does anyone else feel like this and what examples do you have?

If what you're getting at there is that we shouldn't be buying from Starbucks, then fine - don't do that then! Or pressure them to make sure they use local milk, and could the coffee be shipped in a better way? We do need some international trade too, but the balance is all wrong.

I prefer nice cars and holidays in warm places.
Then you prefer kids dying of asthma here, and of poverty in those warm places. Or from drowning as the sea levels rise. It's already impacting in the Pacific.

What I find annoying is the almost religious virtue signaling stance people take in all these increasingly popular causes, and for doing what they should have been doing all along. It's often very preachy.

I see it as the consequence of the decline in mainstream religion. ie, people used to feel better about themselves by doing things that were religious - maybe working on acquiring the 7 graces for example, or some sort of self denial, these actions were largely private.

Now we get people announcing 'I'm doing xyz to save the planet! But Mr Butcher/baker/candlestick maker is sooooo ignoramus and not woke like me I'm such a good, attuned person! I do xyz and obviously care about the planet so much more than them. And making subjective negative appraisals about those who choose to do differently.

I'm working class. My carbon footprint is low already due to poverty. I take public transport, I walk, I have clothes I've worn for decades and these days I replace with well made stuff I know will last further years, I have furniture I've not replaced for years, electrical goods I use until they literally die on me. Haven't been able to redecorate, No holidays for years, patch my childrens school uniforms, cook for 2 days minimum each time.

I do resent being preached to, by often a middle class cadre, who are often virtue signaling, like the protesters in London a few weeks ago, who prevented me getting to work to earn enough to pay my council tax which goes towards upkeep of the environment, local recycling, litter picking. I guarantee you if we did a comparison their 'carbon footprint' is more than mine.

Being preached to is annoying please go away. OP your 'do you find people like to challenge?...' followed by a montage of your great efforts to save the planet, and responses of 'poor things, they're set in their ways, they're frightened of new things' just sounds preachy and incredibly patronising'

Amen, TF!

My sympathies Catherine. I am also from the working classes, now probably count as the squeezed lower middle, and I agree the middle classes ought to be leading by example. As should those above them. But we all have to do what we can.

@TFBundy this year, DH and I have decided against a second child, I’ve gone vegan, and we’ve agreed that we won’t fly again unless a much more harmful technology is invented.

Not virtue signalling- in fact most of our friends don’t know any of this. I do think that there’s a growing group of people who are concerned enough to ‘put their money where their mouth is’, so to speak. Not much point in fretting about the day told by (only) child will grow up in, without doing what I can to reduce my own impact.

^ that should be “world”, not “day told”

Hands up who’s going to get to get their tubes tied and never leave this rainy isle again to help turn the tide??? Thought not.

Me. So swivel TF.

I recently took my reusable cup into a service station Costa. The man serving me made my coffee in a disposable cup, poured that into my keep cup, then tossed the disposable in the bin. He looked at me with total derision when I questioned the process!

I’ve also just realised I wrote “much more harmful technology”. Oh dear, time for a nap I think!!

@TFBundy, I really don’t think you can reduce this to the point of ‘you’re not living like a medieval peasant, therefore there’s no point’

I don’t think you appreciate the scale of what we’re facing. We need to totally restructure our way of life, our economy, everything. If we do enough to reduce, poorer countries might have a chance to build up their own infrastructures and resilience.

I am using reusable sanpro, btw 😂

But it doesn't have to be all or nothing @TFBundy.

Of course the ideal would be we all stop flying, but actually reducing air travel by 50% would also have an impact....and that's much more palatable. Surely, even you could make do with two or three foreign holidays a year instead of five?

Most of us could tolerate driving less or driving a more environmentally friendly car. It doesn't have to be gas guzzling 4x4 or bicycle.

I just don't think it's true that we either have to live in the woods knitting lentils and sacrificing our children or not give a fuck.

There has to be a middle ground, no?

@TFBundy I don't like flying so no danger of me doing that, and I'm unlikely to have children. Apart from that I just do the usual recycling/mooncup etc and figure me existing is pretty low key due to the flying/no kids

Meanwhile, while the virtue signallers...well... virtue signal, the planet continues on its never ending cycle from ice age to tropical and back again, as it has for the first 3.5 billion years of its life.

I have no children (over-population is the biggest problem on this planet), no car, no overseas flying, I buy glass rather than plastic where possible, I recycle, I have never been a fan of conspicuous consumption, wear the same clothes for years, still have second hand furniture given to me by friends and family when I bought my first home over forty years ago. I rarely buy anything which isn't to replace something which no longer functions. Don't often buy takeaways but if I do, I do not take my own container, I only buy free range meat and will not reduce my consumption. The same goes for dairy and eggs, I tend to only buy fruit and veg when in season but that's because eg strawberries in December are tasteless.

Thumbs up to TFBundy and CatherineOfAragonsPrayerBook

I have kids. I justified it on the basis that I don't want the only humans left living to be those who, from nature or nurture, have no empathy for the state of the environment (not sure empathy is the correct term here, but can't think of a better). As I said, population is not the only or main issue. You're right to highlight lifestyle - but then you won't change yours! Nuance is not an excuse for deliberately inflicting poisons on other people. I don't fly btw.

If everyone swapped their 4x4 for a smaller vehicle the oil saving would be massive

This. And if you don't have any pets, don't get one. And if you do, don't add to them.

Dark, that's the most virtue-signalling thing I've ever read on here! You had kids because yours are so superior to other peoples' you gifted them to the universe 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Overpopulation is indeed a very 'main issue'.

As others have said, if we really wanted to solve things then eating mainly vegetarian, not flying and not having children would help. As a natural pessimist I feel a good part of the human population is doomed anyway as things aren’t going to move fast enough.
As a practical person I am doing what I can. I’d kind of prefer to die knowing that at least I had tried. To be honest, the planet would be so much better off without the human race.

I work in McDonald’s and you can’t imagine how angry some people have become over the introduction of paper straws

Fair enough, it’s almost impossible to drink a thick shake through them, but that’s a small price to pay for saving the planet from the millions of plastic straws McDonalds gets through each year!

Yesterday I saw a mother encouraging her son to step on something in the car park. When I got closer I realised he had just killed a bee some people are twats and can’t see past the end of their own nose.