I am feeling that a lot of acts which harm our ecosystem, cause global warming and cause damage to other beings too. What things can I do to minimize the harm from my side? I try not to throw rubbish on street but that is only thing I know. I don’t have recycling bins where I live.
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The thing is the personal responsibility to help the planet and climate was propaganda put out by oil companies to direct it away from them. Realistically as a single individual, the most impactful thing you can do is clean up litter. If you must use dangerous chemicals, after their use dispose of them properly. Not down a sink or storm drain. As an individual that’s the most impact you can really do. Everything else is really performative.
You try not to throw trash on the street? Why would you ever do this!
well where I live, it is quite common to throw trash, to spit on street. You will even see some people publicly peeing on the walls.
Then you should set an example for others and not do any of those things.
Destroying a data center, eating the rich.
I am not in US
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The Epstein class is everywhere :)
I buy local wild flower seeds and throw them around when I’m walking about.
interesting
Watch your own money, where you spend it.
Think about it. Inform yourself and decide carefully.
This is where you can make the biggest change. Even though you might not actually see the impact, but it will be real.
reduce your consumption, reuse items, and recycle waste. prioritize in that order.
don’t eat farmed meat. it’s very resource intensive to farm.
minimize travel by plane and by car. they’re not very fuel efficient.
vote for politicians that share your ideals.
how to know which meat is farmed or not?
Majority of the meat most people have access to is from farms. Poultry, beef, pork are typically farm raised. Hunting some regard as the only ethical way to get regular meat, I have a differing opinion on that.
I love all of these and would add only that even doing small changes can have large impacts if we all did them. If everyone are just one less meal a week of red meat farming as a whole would be so much less horrible. Replacing one weekly car trip with a bike, walk, or transit. If even half of our population started with small things like those we could make a real dent.
That being said doing more is always better!
Not eating meat is probably the biggest impact you can have, followed by using public transportation whenever possible.
Grow indigenous pollinator-friendly plants. Minimize your trash output as much as you can. Vote against expanding the military budget if youre in the US.
Fr tho going vegetarian/vegan is huge on a personal scale, large-scale farming is tremendously harmful.
If for some reason the challenge of avoiding meat entirely threatens to get you abandoning your principles entirely, the other option is to just vastly reduce your meat consumption. We get used to giant portions with each meal; but there’s many ways just a little bit of meat can greatly enhance the flavor of a dish.
Still, worth looking at the many forms of meatless cooking too.
Not eating meat is probably the biggest impact you can have
I doubt it
You’re welcome to review and refute the science
first, the paper does not make such a claim. that’s fluff provided by one of the authors. second, that paper has dubious methodology, so even its conclusions should not be trusted.
edit:
You’re welcome to review and refute the science
… but if you do, I’ll just downvote instead of dealing with the fact that the evidence is insufficient.
The old slogan “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is in priority order. Buy less stuff, and try to fully make use of used things before you buy new. In this vein, I saw a great rhyme posted at a children’s play center to encourage the kids to make efficient use of the craft supplies: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”
Try to reduce your day-to-day travel by living close to work/school/groceries/etc.
Eat less meat and dairy.
If you own your home, consider energy efficiency improvements like new windows or a more efficient HVAC system. If your home has a yard, don’t spray herbicides/pesticides, and plant things to support native insects and birds.
Advocate for dense zoning and walkable urban development in your city, and better public transit.
Others have mentioned the meat but wanted to point out this can include milk and milk products.
If there’s any parks near you, go for a walk and bring a bag to collect garbage in. I almost always find wrappers or bottles I can pick up.
If there’s any citizen science projects near you those are great. Scientists sometimes need regular people to just record things from around them like how many bugs they can catch or something.
Also, biodiversity loss is a huge problem. If you can create a hedge or some sort of wild area in your yard it can really boost the local biodiversity over time.
Citizen science is also very engaging and entertaining! I participate in the Breeding Bird Survey in my town, and I get to know my assigned patch of woods like the back of my hand by trying to find all the bird nests (and breeding pairs of various species, and migrating birds) in there each spring.
Go vegan. It has a huge impact on the environment, and at the same time, you aren’t actively and intentionally harming other animals.
plenty of people have tried that. the environment gets worse
Do you have any evidence beyond “trust me bro” because
Recent science from 2023 says otherwise.
this “research” itself relies almost entirely on poore-nemecek 2018, which suffers from major flaws. it combines disparately methodized lca studies, which is explicitly against the guidance for lca studies.
more importantly, that study does not find that the environment has improved.
the bad faith trolling continues.
Bomb a datacenter
Why stop at one?
Gotta start somewhere. Eventually I’ll ascend to a ceremonial rattle of DRAM chips and a teardrop tattoo of a hard drive for each one that has fallen to my hand
VOTE for politicians that prioritize the environment and public health.
See if there’s a local Weed Warriors volunteer group near you, or some other organization that addresses invasive plants. Invasive plants have become a big problem impacting biodiversity, these plants were introduced by humans and need humans to help restore balance to local ecosystems. Ideally plant native seeds to replace the invasives.
If there’s anything in your life that burns fossil fuels (e.g. major home appliances or vehicles) look into electrified alternatives. At least in my area there are substantial local incentives to replace gas furnaces and appliances with electric heat pumps or appliances, often making those the cheapest option to install. And because they are more efficient than fossil fuels, they are price competitive to operate and often need less maintenance (particularly EV cars vs ICE cars). Public transit and bicycling when available are even better.
If you’re unable to have solar panels installed where you live, some states allow you to get your electricity from a third party company. Programs vary by state in terms of how effective this is, but some make the third party company prove their green energy is in your state’s borders and that your electric bill dollars go towards incentivizing new production. This often helps save you money because solar is cheaper than fossil fuels now.
If you have the space and knack for gardening, try cultivating a native plant garden for pollinators. Maybe put out a bird feeder or two, keep it cleaned
If this idea appeals to you, but you don’t know where to start because you’ve never tried your hand at gardening before, it’s possible your local university will have information tailored specifically to your region and growing conditions. At least, my state’s university extension website has a whole section dedicated to tutorializing every stage of the process and suggested plants by type. Very helpful if you don’t know your zinnias from your azaleas.
The best part about native plants is you don’t need the knack for gardening since they’ve evolved to survive in your area without help! You just have to do a bit of research to make sure the plant is a good fit for the yard location with regards to sun, water, etc and then ignore it.
Another benefit of gardening is a lot of organic waste reduction. I started to do composting using lactic acid bacteria and it reduced the amount of stuff we were throwing away to the point where we only really need to set the trashcan on the curb like once every 4 weeks.
You basically inoculate your food scraps, paper, and cardboard with bacteria that starts breaking it down before you put it in the ground. No more flies, smell, watching what you are putting in the compost, or having to turn it over all the time. Once you fill your container you just set it aside to pickle for a week and then bury it, two weeks in the ground and its good to go.
I would love to hear more about this, my compost heap definitely Needs Improvement
Basic guide for the type of composting I do.
You can also look up guides on YouTube or online to make your own inputs by searching for KNF or Korean Natural Farming. It will basically teach you to run an fully self sufficient garden/small farm
Specialized equipment and input kinda makes it a no go for me, but that’s super cool! Do you do direct burial or use it to heat up a heap? Right now I’ve pretty much got a mound of food scraps, sticks, and cardboard that eventually turns into something I can mix into a planter
If you want to keep it basic you can buy the bokashi bran online. I just use a 5 gallon igloo water cooler for fermentation.
Do you do direct burial or use it to heat up a heap?
Just bury it after fermentation. It becomes really rich soil in like a week to two weeks. The worms love the fermented scraps, so it really gets broken down by them before it fully decomposes. No heaps or heating required. You can also just buy it directly under what your planting and it will feed the plant for at least a season.
Don’t buy shit you don’t need, reuse what you can, recycle, what’s left, stop eating so much meat and dairy (especially red meat) or stop entirely, switch to !micromobility@lemmy.world over a vehicle if you can, if you have a house get your insulation done, switch to solar, next time your HVAC dies, replace it with a heat pump, avoid non-local products where possible, buy sustainable, and consider volunteering in meaningful ways.
Once the solar punk instance comes back up, check them out: I think you will appreciate a lot of their communities: slrpnk.net
Picking up litter is never a bad idea.
