The article was very well written. Unfortunately, 90% of the people I’d forward it to would be TLDR…
Or several trillion very small problems.
Over 80% of microolastic production coming from macro plastic breakdown feels pretty bleak.
Plastics industry: “See?! We told you plastic decomposes and doesn’t just stay in landfills forever. Happy now?”
There are many reasons we are screwed as a species. There’s pretty much nothing I can do about it, unfortunately.
Rather than take a defeatist veiw from this line if thinking, it will do well for your mental health to first spend more time, energy and thoughts on things you can control. Not just things related to environmentalism, but broadly reduce energy, engagement and focus from the things you don’t have significant control over and direct them to those things you do have control. It’s good to get a broad picture and observe the world around you outside of your control in small doses, but it’s easy to over indulge in an unfocused survey of problems in the world, especially on social media. (I include Lemmy communities in the social media category).
Furthermore, when you do engage with these problems, do so with more narrow focus and in more depth with an eye towards understanding the level of impact the problem has and what organizations or policy positions you can support to amplify your limited influence over the issues that causee the problem. In this way you can mitigate the feelings of helplessness and sense of there being many existential and imminent problems you need to contend with but cannot remedy. You can turn seemingly untouchable solutions into real possibilities without overwhelming your emotional capacity by working with others.
I appreciate this, it’s really good advice and what I try to do, but I can always be better.
At the moment I volunteer for a food bank that focuses on redistributing surplus food stocks from businesses instead of having them go to the bin. This is because I abhor waste.
I also volunteer for the Scouts because it upsets me to see young people glued to screens all the time, never leaving their home, and not knowing what the real world and real social situations are. Also, I missed out on a lot of these things as a child because I shied away from them and nobody encouraged me. I enjoyed hiking with my older brother and my uncle, but the premise of joining the Scouts was never even given to me as an option.
It’s amazing to see kids say “what’s this plant, what’s that tree, what is that mushroom, can I eat that berry?” and sometimes being able to answer them, or at least tell them how they can find themselves an answer. “Take a picture of it, do some research, tell me what you find out next week”
Biggest sources:
- 7.6 Mt from macro plastics breaking down
- 1.3 Mt from paint
- 1.0 Mt from tyres
10-40 Mt released into environment/year, and increasing.
I think it depends on measure, if im not mistaken, by weight arohnd 50% of microplastics are tire dust.
