To think that Halloween is proof that Cop26 is pointless and will achieve nothing?

[AngelicaElizaAndPeggy]

Sorry this is quite depressing.

I'm just looking at the 4 nice pumpkins that are sitting in my kitchen. They have been grown, probs using quite heavy-duty pest control and fertilizer chemicals and then transported to the massive Tesco's superstore where I bought them. You could also buy loads of plastic imported Halloween tat like masks, face paints, novelty pumpkin carving kits and big banners with things like 'Enter if you dare grrr' written in blood.
On Sunday night, my kids dressed up in their flammable fancy dress outfits and set off round our street where there were big mounted voldemorts hanging from doorways, ghost fairy lights and even a light projector that beamed skulls onto the side of a house making spooky sounds.

AIBU to panic about the massive tide of pointless ruff we buy in places like superstores, b&m, the range and home bargains? And others, those are just the first ones I think of? Unless we stop importing and buying all this pointless stuff, we are going to completely choke the planet with carbon, plastic and toxins. I'm as guilty of it as anyone and it makes me feel sick at just the sheer enormity and inertia of it. Unless we address our addiction to buying mass produced, imported stuff, everything the bigwigs in Glasgow decide to do will be pointless. But, if we do stop buying plastic tat, then our service based consumer economy will collapse. So I just feel utterly hopeless about the whole thing.

Sorry this is a massive rant.

YABU for buying into the hype.

we don't do Halloween 🤷‍♀️

We carved one pumpkin sourced from our local farm shop, strung up the plastic pumpkin lights we bought 12 years ago and used some empty milk cartons with head torches inside.

I made my daughter's costume and she is going to wear it again for a fancy dress party in a few weeks and then we will decide what to do with it longer term.

It can be as much or as little as you make it.

@WheelieBinPrincess

Yeah the squirrels in the local park get the pumpkins that I do with the kids I nanny for.

Please don't put your pumpkins in the park.

Firstly it's just dumping your waste in a public space which attracts rats

Secondly pumpkins are poisonous to some wildlife, including hedgehogs.

@Aspiringmatriarch

YANBU. Until we ban all the useless plastic tat etc people will just keep buying it, every year it gets more excessive. I hate to think of the waste and pollution generated by all this stuff.

Yep. It starts to make me so incredibly angry. This stuff shouldn’t be sold or should have double VAT which goes into some environmental fund. I try hard to buy second hand most of the time but avoiding the tat mostly just means I have to avoid shops with my DC so they don’t know that it exists.

No it’s all about how we heat our homes and businesses and how we travel/ transport things. The small things about what we eat and buy are largely irrelevant to the big issue.

Who gets to decide what is "tat" though?
A White Company candle?
Yet another pair of Jimmy Choos?
Gucci perfume?

There is a grat deal of expensive shite polluting the planet- it isn't all stuff bought by the great unwashed at B&M.

Seriously who needs 4 pumpkins, and surely everyone reuses Halloween decorations? I just get a box down from the loft that we’ve had for 5+ years. The DC love seeing it all again. And costumes get passed on or sold or donated. It’s not ideal but I believe some people just consume for the sake of it.

I bought pumpkins from a local pumpkin farm, toasted the pumpkin seeds for birds, any Halloween decorations are packed away ready for next year so reusable. All the outfits we either had or were given to us free as people pass on outfits here.

@Fundays12

I bought pumpkins from a local pumpkin farm, toasted the pumpkin seeds for birds, any Halloween decorations are packed away ready for next year so reusable. All the outfits we either had or were given to us free as people pass on outfits here.

However i do see your point OP even given my comments above. I have bought a lot of immaculate second hand toys for Christmas to reduce our plastic usage, get milk delivered in glass bottles, have reduced food waste and we are walking more. It’s saving the planet and our bank balance a bit.

I disagree that if we stopped buying plastic tat then "our service based economy would collapse".
Service encompasses so many things- it would need a big rethink (which I agree and as youvr demonstrated yourself most people aren't up for doing) but we could easily switch away from cheap disposable tat to spending more on long wearing and lasting things. So buy more expensive halloween, Christmas decorations that last for years rather than new crap every year. Similarly if we stopped spending money on plastic crap we might have more money to spend on other services - beauty,leisure, travelling (which does of course cause its own issues but doesn't have to include flying), eating out, etc.

It's such an uphill battle though. Even now with gas prices so incredibly high I know so many people who just whack the heating on full blast rather than stick a jumper and hat on and fill up a hot water bottle. On loads of different forums I've seen people saying they keep the heating set at 21 all year. There's an article on the news right now saying nearly half of Britons keep their heating at 24 degrees in the winter which is the outside temperature of the Bahamas! Unless you're very old or young (or unwell) most people aren't going to freeze to death in October without the heating on for a few hours but we can't even be bothered to do that! Let alone other "easy" changes like not buying Halloween tat, throwaway fashion, taking public transport, etc.

The only way 90% of people (including myself) are going to change is if the non environmentally friendly alternative becomes significantly harder, more expensive or more inconvenient that the environmentally friendly one.

Currently it takes 50 minutes to take the bus into my nearest town, and 18 to drive there. Parking on an evening or a Sunday is less than the bus ticket. I'm obviously going to drive in, its much more convenient, pleasant and doesn't cost me more. If the cost of parking was tripled, or cars were completely banned from the inner city area I would have to catch the bus.

Currently if I buy something that's not recyclable I chuck it in the bin and it gets taken away every fortnight with minimum effort on my behalf. I don't have to think about where it goes or what happens to it. If the council stopped providing non recyclable waste services and I had to go to the tip and wait in a huge queue to get rid of stuff myself id be actively trying not to get non recyclable stuff in the first place.

@Cassimin

I was thinking this the other day. My nans generation did not have all this tat. They had 2 wars, no foreign holidays, ate fresh food, cooked from scratch. Then came my mums generation, fast food, plastic packaging, tat, I could go on.... Then my generation have made it even worse. I have children in their 20s and this is normal to them now. We have managed to cause all this in just 2 generations. We need to make it right.

Does anyone think we're seriously going to go back to the 40's or 50's (or even the 60s)? There is not a chance people will accept that reduction in disposable income and consumerism. Where is the time to cook everything from scratch going to come from?

Cognitive dissonance.

We'll all mock the hypocrisy of Boris flying back to London by private jet but then none of us are really doing enough to change our habits in any meaningful way either.

There is a grat deal of expensive shite polluting the planet- it isn't all stuff bought by the great unwashed at B&M.

Excellent point

Anyway, Halloween is the tiniest drop in the ocean of this enormous problem. Focusing on it in particular seems odd.

Anyway, Halloween is the tiniest drop in the ocean of this enormous problem. Focusing on it in particular seems odd.

Of course, but it serves to illustrate a point.

The richer we are the more pollution and CO2 we produce.

www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity

Currently it takes 50 minutes to take the bus into my nearest town, and 18 to drive there. Parking on an evening or a Sunday is less than the bus ticket. I'm obviously going to drive in, its much more convenient, pleasant and doesn't cost me more. If the cost of parking was tripled, or cars were completely banned from the inner city area I would have to catch the bus.

Currently if I buy something that's not recyclable I chuck it in the bin and it gets taken away every fortnight with minimum effort on my behalf. I don't have to think about where it goes or what happens to it. If the council stopped providing non recyclable waste services and I had to go to the tip and wait in a huge queue to get rid of stuff myself id be actively trying not to get non recyclable stuff in the first place.

I agree we need better solutions but in your examples -

People will just stop going to towns at all.
There will be a massive increase in fly tipping.

We do need carrots as well as sticks - buses need to much cheaper and more regular outside of London.
We need legislation against the stupid amount of non-recyclable packing which is for the retailer's convenience not ours.

@closedown

Cognitive dissonance.

We'll all mock the hypocrisy of Boris flying back to London by private jet but then none of us are really doing enough to change our habits in any meaningful way either.

Yes - it's like being in traffic jam and complaining about "all the traffic" as if we are not part of the problem - but society is set up a certain way - it can be hard and expensive to change. No way can I afford an electric car for example - even the cheapest second hand ones are way more than I ever spend on car.

@Cassimin

I was thinking this the other day. My nans generation did not have all this tat. They had 2 wars, no foreign holidays, ate fresh food, cooked from scratch. Then came my mums generation, fast food, plastic packaging, tat, I could go on.... Then my generation have made it even worse. I have children in their 20s and this is normal to them now. We have managed to cause all this in just 2 generations. We need to make it right.

In many ways that’s fair, but one myth that needs deflating is the food one - postwar generations really didn’t eat lovely fresh food. My Nan and older relatives existed entirely on tinned food, and all sorts of sugary factory made packaged rubbish! The poorer they were, the worse the food - tinned suet pies, meat paste made from processed meat slurry, packet dried goods made of poor quality ingredients - the works.

Got to go back a very long way now before locally grown fresh food was eaten by the majority of people. Poorer people ate very badly during most of the 20th century, especially postwar, and suffered health problems and widespread tooth decay as a result. It’s a big myth that the wartime generation were healthier.

Got to go back a very long way now before locally grown fresh food was eaten by the majority of people. Poorer people ate very badly during most of the 20th century, especially postwar, and suffered health problems and widespread tooth decay as a result. It’s a big myth that the wartime generation were healthier.

Good point - and while we're heading back to the 50's - do we want a 50s level of NHS?

We picked one pumpkin ourselves, bought our child a second hand outfit and steered completely clear of the plastic crap. Halloween doesn't have to be that bad.

I’m prepared to do my bit to combat global warming, but I draw the line at eating pumpkin.

@Flipflopblowout

We are just catching up with the way that its done in the USA. There is a lot more to follow.

Well I don't think we'll all be driving around in 6L V8 cars instead of Ford Focuses anytime soon, but yeah.

@daimbarsatemydogsbone

Got to go back a very long way now before locally grown fresh food was eaten by the majority of people. Poorer people ate very badly during most of the 20th century, especially postwar, and suffered health problems and widespread tooth decay as a result. It’s a big myth that the wartime generation were healthier.

Good point - and while we're heading back to the 50's - do we want a 50s level of NHS?

Exactly - my working class paternal grandmother (who died in 2005), had all her teeth removed during her first pregnancy (aged 20!) This was quite common as the state of people’s teeth was really shocking at the time due to poor diet. Just think of how many people had dentures, diabetes, heart issues in that generation alone. My relatives of that generation hardly ate a vegetable unless it was a cabbage that had been boiled to death. Their staple diet was tinned meat pies, meat paste sandwiches, packet soups, tinned fish and meat, chocolate biscuits, cheap pop, builders’ tea and Mr Kipling - pretty much all their lives.

It was my (boomer) parents’ generation who were interested in growing their own veg, cooking and eating better from the 70s onwards. Now, not all boomers, I agree. But the wartime generation did not have healthy diets and any veg they ate during the war for a few years was certainly cancelled out by the rest of their diets and all the powdered sugary rubbish! My gran fed all her babies in the 40s and 50s on “National dried milk” formula (the ingredients of which would make your eyes pop today!) mixed with Ribena and rosehip syrup.

YABVVU
You are part of the problem but want to make yourself feel better by ranting about other people's tat.
If you're going to be a sheep and but into this stuff at least own it.

@speakout

Who gets to decide what is "tat" though? A White Company candle? Yet another pair of Jimmy Choos? Gucci perfume?

There is a grat deal of expensive shite polluting the planet- it isn't all stuff bought by the great unwashed at B&M.

I think this ^^ is a very good point.

It all has an impact -not just Halloween and Christmas.

Buying clothes, handbags, shoes, housewares, posh stuff, designer stuff, cheap stuff, you name it, people buy it. Year in, year out. I remember a thread on here with the OP talking about buying ‘the new autumn range’ of bed linen every year ‘because she loved it’ -again, why?

Arguably the expensive luxurious tat is just as costly to the planet as the mass produced Halloween plastic.

I know so many women who go clothes shopping and buy a load of new gear every month. Again, why? Just wear what you already have ffs. Rewear and rewear and rewear. No one needs new clothes and handbags and shoes every bloody month.

There are small things everyone can do and buying less new stuff full stop is one of them.

buy into