They have no clean drinking water and it’s your fault!

[Neapolitanicecream]

Watched Stacy Dooley “Fashion dirty secret” on BBC last night. Lost sleep over it. Michael Gove is clueless on the poisonings of water for millions of people. It’s a disaster and it’s our fault with buying cheap cotton. We need to do something! Kids are being poisoned 🤢 it made me cry

“Wear me, love me, mend me, pass me on.” CONSUME LESS

I can't seem to get past the way some families in dire situations just keep having children!
I think religion needs to be banned.

"We simply consume too much stuff"

Yes, but, the more people they are, the more stuff they consume and the more waste they produce. It's naive to think otherwise. People seriously need to wake up.

In 1800 there were 1 billion people on the planet.
In 1927 there were 2 billion.
In 1960 there were 3 billion.
In 1974 there were 4 billion.
In 1987 there were 5 billion.
In 1999 there were 6 billion.
In 2007 there were 7 billion.
In 2023 they expect us to hit 8 billion.
In 2037 they expect us to hit 9 billion.

So the rate of growth is slowing down over the next decades but just look at it. And since contraception became more readily available, and the pill came along, population sped up enormously. Of course all sorts of other reasons too, such as living longer, less infant mortaility.

Offering people worldwide access to free, reliable contraception is a great idea. Having policies on how many children people can have is not. That goes down the road of forced sterilisation / abortion's.

The thing you have to understand is that not buying cheap cotton (or whatever product is relevant to the locality in question) will only leave the people there with dirty water and no job which means no food. These countries don't have a welfare system. If you stop buying products produced there it will just lead to loss of livelihood which is devestating with no safety net and the water will still be dirty because the government officials are too busy spending their bribes to give a shit about water. I'm surprised that this isn't blindingly obvious. The choice is between I get my cheap cotton and the locals earn a living or I buy more expensive cotton from a different source (fine, doesn't really make a difference to me whether I have one shirt or three) but the locals who work in their factories loose their jobs, the locals who sell thing to the factory workers go out if business, the farmers/bakers/people from other factories etc loose a source of revenue themselves (possibly also go out of business if the majority of their buyers are local) and so on.

@kaytee87 is right 100%

True Memory Yesterday's news about the state of our environment will shock people for a while but most of us carry on the same way.

Organic cotton: doesn't use agrochemicals in cultivation but I imagine the water consumption is the same. According to Wikipedia cotton growing accounts for 10-16% of global pesticide use, so choosing organic cotton would help to reduce that. Also choosing unbleached if possible.

Linen: I have some clothes and sheets. I have built up quite a collection of bed linen and towels cos I like pretty things. Realistically I probably don't need to buy another duvet cover for the rest of my life. Other bed linen and towels might wear out faster but I probably won't need to buy any more for at least a decade . Let's see if I can stick to that...

@kaytee Playing devil's advocate for a moment, let's say we provide worldwide access to free reliable contraception. Let's say the Catholic Church actually says "you know what, we think you should use contraception in order to save ALL of God's creatures left on earth, not just man". But people don't listen. Climate change gets worse. More natural disasters as a result. Increased waste. We wipe out more living creatures. And as a result, we actually seriously threaten to wipe ourselves out. Do we simply carry on?

@kaytee - I assume ppeatfruit has had an email telling her she was mentioned on a thread by you.

ppeatfruit - if you don’t want email notifications you can turn them off by going to ‘Customise’ on the talk menu and unticking the “Notify me when others post on threads I'm watching: by email and
Notify me when others mention me in a thread: by email “ boxes

Losing jobs is the least of these people's problems. They're dying from the pollution in their rivers.

I feel sick about how my grandchildrens' world will be sooo degraded.

Regarding overpopulation, changing people's mindset's about family size would be a start.

There is still a stigma - from some quarters - attached to having an only child. Reading any post on MN about having an only child makes this utterly apparent.

Stacey Dooley, that towering source

Thanks Rusty

"I suspect the charity shops are overwhelmed with the fast fashion and barely sell any of it on."

yes, I live in one of those run down areas where half the high street is charity shops - the other half is junk food, don't get me started - and they say they feel they are being used a disposal service. With people buying more and more, with the intention of actually binning it - Halloween and Xmas coming up etc - the amount that gets dumped on the shop doorsteps....people have overflowing bins, all types of rubbish are being collected less frequently.

so if this programme has had an effect on people and if some of those are lurking, please don't think that you giving to the charity shop makes any difference.

and that's aside from the amount of clothing shops are throwing away themselves.

Give is in a position to do something about it though. It’s not his portfolio, but he’s senior in government and can lobby for aid money to align with priorities

I struggle to see how this is in any way Gove's fault. As you say it is not his portfolio and, because of cabinet collective responsibility, we have no idea what he is lobbying for.

@banalana I used to volunteer in an op shop. A lot of what we were given was chucked straight in the bin. Basically anything that wasn't in good condition went in the bin. So anything worn looking, stained (even a tiny bit), torn, bobbled etc would go in the bin anyway.

how is it not Gove's portfolio, he has Environment?

Actually, otterturk sneering about Stacey Dooley is uncalled for.

She did highlight something many of us weren’t aware of, how is that worthy of your scorn?

If it gets the message across then isn’t that what matters?

ppeatfruit, oh, so you got to reproduce? I’m alright, Jill, pull up the ladder?

Not purely Gove's fault of course but I can't remember when TM has EVER mentioned the environment, though what she says and what she does aren't the same I know.

Big business rules our world to the detriment of everything else IMO.

luvsmall I only had children because my sister and brother did not and that was in the 80s.

@ppeatfruit I'm intrigued, so did you wait until your sister hit menopause and your brother was very elderly until ttc? How did you know they wouldn't have children?

Oh, well if it was in the 80s I’m sure they’ve had no effect on the environment at all. And your grandchildren (assuming not hypothetical) will surely have only been born recently, so did your children not take you up on your generous offer of BC and ignore your hypocritical preaching then?