Change of Subject...(non gills)

[alphabet_king]

Ps if we are trying to positively influence those countries which may have a bigger problem and our own house is not in order surely that undermines our position as well?

You must be misreading my position as I've actually said those exact words..."of course we need to make sure our house is in order" I said in my first and second posts i think.

The point though is that we all spend so much time and money getting our own house in order in the belief that it will make the slightest bit of difference to the plastics in the oceans etc. We seem to be being made to feel guilty for something quite frankly we are nit causing at all.

I dont think it's an either or. I think we need to do what we can without gong overboard. But also think a lot more should be done to put pressure on the worst offending countries as that's the main issue.

 

[NorthamptonGills]

I think my point is that to say we are not causing the problem at all is just wrong

Every piece of pollution/non recycled material contributes to the global problem and all citizens have an equal responsibility for minimising it

Hopefully we can agree on that

 

[jogills]

More than 40 companies have signed up to a pact to cut plastic pollution over the next seven years.
The firms, which include Coca-Cola and Asda, have promised to honour a number of pledges such as eliminating single-use packaging through better design.

good news and it goes to show how public pressure and of course this thread have had an effect:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43901328

 

[ThreeSixes]

Every piece of pollution/non recycled material contributes to the global problem and all citizens have an equal responsibility for minimising it

I don't agree, sorry.

If person A pollutes much more than person B, then person A has more responsibility to reduce their pollution. They don't have equal responsibility

 

[Baghdad_Rob]

I don't agree, sorry.

If person A pollutes much more than person B, then person A has more responsibility to reduce their pollution. They don't have equal responsibility

If you believe pollution is wrong then you have a responsibility to try and reduce your pollution regardless of whether or not someone else pollutes more.

 

[alphabet_king]

I don't agree, sorry.

If person A pollutes much more than person B, then person A has more responsibility to reduce their pollution. They don't have equal responsibility

It’s semantics, 666, but I’d agree they both have equal responsibility to minimise it, it‘s just one party has much more to do to meet their responsibilities than the other.

My issue is that we seem to be taking our responsibility to a very silly level way below what the Chinese for example do. And actually it’s taking us a load of effort and cost to do so when the Chinese aren’t doing much at all. And the added effort we’re going to actually is pretty pointless anyway as it’s not really even touching the surface of the overall amount of plastic pollution. Until China and the other to 20 countries meet even what our standards are now, it’s futile us trying drastically to push standards down much further IMO.

If you believe pollution is wrong then you have a responsibility to try and reduce your pollution regardless of whether or not someone else pollutes more.

No one is saying we don't. How many times do we have to say it. it's just that actually we are already doing a lot. Much much more than other countries are. If we actually want to reduce pollution overall we would be MUCH better rewarded we focused on the real problems - the top polluters.

 

[Wayne.Kerr]

I don't think anyone is saying that we shouldn't continue to do whatever we can to save the environment; however, what we actually do is just a drop in the ocean but as AK wrote: "we should lead the way too, and lead by example."

 

[Baghdad_Rob]

No one is saying we don't. How many times do we have to say it.

I was responding to the person I clicked reply to and not you. What I wrote has the same meaning as this quote:

"It’s semantics, 666, but I’d agree they both have equal responsibility to minimise it, it‘s just one party has much more to do to meet their responsibilities than the other."

What the Chinese do shouldn't impact the level of commitment we put towards the problem. We should do all we can and try to convince the heavy polluters to adopt a similar attitude.[/QUOTE]

 

[alphabet_king]

An analogy is as such:

Say you run a business and you employ 10 people. 6 on 10k a year and 4 on 1m a year. If you want to reduce your wage costs what approach do you take?

Now of course you would make sure the people charging 10k a year are worth their money. But surely you’d look at the 4 people on 1m a year first? Surely this is the place you’d be much better off focusing on – how could you reduce their costs?

Yeh every little helps and all that – but if you focus on reducing the wages of people 10k to 8k or something, you’re quite frankly wasting your time and never going to achieve your aim of any sort of significant savings.

For example though, if you replaced one with someone who earns 800k then you’d make a much bigger saving than you’d ever make scrabbling around messing around with the wages of the lower earners.

So really surely you focus your main priorities on reducing the biggest earners. While of course you’d make sure you’re not throwing away money on the lower earners unnecessarily (we should keep recycling and doing our best), you’d be a fool if your first priority wasn’t the high earner (the top polluters).

What the Chinese do shouldn't impact the level of commitment we put towards the problem. We should do all we can and try to convince the heavy polluters to adopt a similar attitude.

'all we can' - that's a very subjective wording view though. We could spend millions, billions on this - as we are, and quite frankly we would not achieve our aim of reducing waste at all. How much more should we spend to it to amount to 'all we can'. How much more should we spend chasing the dream in the knowledge that any difference we do make makes such a little amount anyway?

 

[nibbles]

I don’t like your analogy because it suggests we have the same control over other countries’ polluting ways as we do our own.

Reducing our own pollution and persuading others to do the same are not mutually exclusive things.