Back in the day...we didnt have the "green thing"

[pylon]

Originally Posted by rubecube

<snip>

Again, I don't disagree for a second. I am just as guilty of having to have the latest, the greatest, and the most convenient. I am just as wasteful as anyone. It is how the blame is being assigned the just gets me in hough every time I hear it.

I remember having a similar discussion with a young guy that works here a year or so back. And he was saying how my generation (I am 37 so I don't know how I became a baby boomer...but anyway) ruined his planet. Meanwhile, there is 2 pop cans on, and a case of bottled water under his desk. He has a bag of food from KFC in the mall, with 4 different Styrofoam containers, and about a week earlier, he got in crap for throwing away 2 tires in the regular dumpster. Meanwhile I had rode my bicycle 20 kms to work that day, and he drove his BMW 12 blocks... and I was responsible for decimating his planet?

It is no longer a generational thing. Everyone is turning into a gluttonous, wasteful piece of garbage.

If I was in charge of the environment, and was anointed king green, the absolute first thing I would banish from the earth is store bought bottled water. Stupidest, most wasteful thing ever. I read once it takes 4 litres of water, to produce the plastic, to hold 1 litre of water..... how stupid is that?

[MrMastodonFarm]

I don't know why, but one of my sick pleasures of Calgarypuck is when plyon gets on his soapbox.

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by pylon

I look at this BS holier than thou attitude this current generation has, and it makes me sick. It is the most wasteful, irresponsible generation I have ever seen.

X-box is broke.. meh, just buy another one for 150 bucks, and throw the old one in the trash. New cell phone every 6 months. New 50" TV every 3 years. How many batteries do people throw in landfills on an annual basis now?

Just wanted to comment on this (comical) post... but you can blame Intel execs (from your generation?) for that one. They plan their cycle of products so the expected lifetime of their products is 18 months, and a lot of people followed. (Expected lifetime based on things like how well the silicon can take heat, electromigration, etc and all that industry related stuff).

To the rest of your post... I don't drink any canned drinks, too cheap to buy my water so I just refill my water bottle... milk cartoons always recycled... I have owned 4 cell phones to date (I lost one, recycled 2 as you can recycle electronics in case you didn't know) .... owned 2 TV's in my life, one was sold the other I still have ... owned 3 laptops in my life, still have 2, one has been recycled via electronics recycle or donated can't remember ... never owned a x-box or PS3 or anything ... batteries are always properly disposed... always bring my own bags... drive a Honda Civic, but half the time I take my motorcycle or ride my bicycle to work.... uh any other justifications you need?

[pylon]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

Just wanted to comment on this (comical) post... but you can blame Intel execs (from your generation?) for that one. They plan their cycle of products so the expected lifetime of their products is 18 months, and a lot of people followed. (Expected lifetime based on things like how well the silicon can take heat, electromigration, etc and all that industry related stuff).

To the rest of your post... I don't drink any canned drinks, too cheap to buy my water so I just refill my water bottle... milk cartoons always recycled... I have owned 4 cell phones to date (I lost one, recycled 2 as you can recycle electronics in case you didn't know) .... owned 2 TV's in my life, one was sold the other I still have ... owned 3 laptops in my life, still have 2, one has been recycled via electronics recycle or donated can't remember ... never owned a x-box or PS3 or anything ... batteries are always properly disposed... always bring my own bags... drive a Honda Civic, but half the time I take my motorcycle or ride my bicycle to work.... uh any other justifications you need?

Yes.... and the current product designers from your generation, aren't still going with the planned obsolescence model. If anything they have shortened the cycle. I am not blaming or pointing the finger at anyone, this is not a generational thing anymore. Society in general is more wasteful than ever.

As for your personal buying and consumption habits, the world needs more people like you. Unfortunately, you are a minority. However, if you really cared about the environment, take your car, and leave the motorbike at home. You might want to look at the shocking emissions issues with motorcycles over cars.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by pylon

Again, I don't disagree for a second. I am just as guilty of having to have the latest, the greatest, and the most convenient. I am just as wasteful as anyone. It is how the blame is being assigned the just gets me in hough every time I hear it.

I remember having a similar discussion with a young guy that works here a year or so back. And he was saying how my generation (I am 37 so I don't know how I became a baby boomer...but anyway) ruined his planet. Meanwhile, there is 2 pop cans on, and a case of bottled water under his desk. He has a bag of food from KFC in the mall, with 4 different Styrofoam containers, and about a week earlier, he got in crap for throwing away 2 tires in the regular dumpster. Meanwhile I had rode my bicycle 20 kms to work that day, and he drove his BMW 12 blocks... and I was responsible for decimating his planet?

It is no longer a generational thing. Everyone is turning into a gluttonous, wasteful piece of garbage.

If I was in charge of the environment, and was anointed king green, the absolute first thing I would banish from the earth is store bought bottled water. Stupidest, most wasteful thing ever. I read once it takes 4 litres of water, to produce the plastic, to hold 1 litre of water..... how stupid is that?

Well I don't think you can take anecdotal evidence like that and staple it to an entire generation. I don't really blame the older generation for where we're at. It's not like people knew what they were doing and said "Hey, piss on it. Leave it for the kids to deal with."

We live in culture where we've been conditioned to consume and compete. The results aren't really all that surprising.

[Phanuthier]

True... this is a world that is all about profits and hype. I wouldn't blame anyone for these electronics lasting less than 2 years though... I'm just saying, they're not designed to live that long. And the thing is, you can't design them to last forever... fundamentally impossible. They are designed to the peak performance to last 18 months, otherwise there is a loss in performance (and thus loss in market share).

its really not a generational thing... I think its more of an awareness type of thing. Which group do you hang out in, the group that tries to be conscious about it or the kind that doesn't care? Granted, I do a lot of things not environmentally friendly (I ride my motorcycle cause I like to... I could easily bike to work more; I take road trips every weekend because I like to get out of the city on weekends, which is not environmentally friendly) ..... but, I think you should try and do what you can if you can. An atttidue like puckluck's really pisses me off, where he is intentionally wasteful. The out look should be positive to be environmentally friendly, not negative finger pointing (nor lecturing... I don't lecture anyone). There are lots of people in my office who throw paper in the trash when we have recycle and a confidential disposal for confidential material....

[Phanuthier]

oh, FTR... I try to be a lean and efficient when it comes to waste (or minimizing waste) because of values installed by my parents when I was younger.... just to show its not really a generational thing

[Itse]

I think young people tend to be more hypocritical, where as older people tend to be more cynical.

As to the greennes of things, I think people are being quite ridiculous about it. It's not really the new phones and such that bother me. It's for example lamps on everything. Back when lamps used to produce a lot of heat and a little light, we used to light up rooms, some main streets and not a lot more.

Now we light up whole houses from the outside in the middle of the night, cupboards from the inside, people put LED:s on their clothes when they go clubbing, people have decorative lights outside of their cars, stores keep all their lights and ad screens on 24/7 whether they are closed or not and half the new design street lamps are pointed somewhere else than on the ground.

It's that kind of stuff that gets me. Every time something becomes more efficient to produce and more eco friendly, people start using more of them to the point where they end up using even more energy and resources than previously.

I think there's even a so-called law about this, but I can't find the name of it now. (It originated in the steam engine era I think. When steam engines started to become smaler, more efficient and used less coal, they also became vastly more popular and thus the total amount of coal use skyrocketed.)

EDIT: For another example, an "eco friendly" store handed out free cotton shopping bags last time I was there. This is to a crowd where most people already had some kind of a shopping bag with them, and propably quite a few reusable shopping bags at home too. So they weren't really encouraging people to be more eco friendly, they were handing out ads for their own store, and ones that needed a lot more resources to produce than a plastic bag would have. But if they had handed out plastic bags, I'm sure their customers would have been weirded out by it. Now people were just happy to have more stuff. Because it was "green" stuff. I've noticed that quite a few of my friends now have just as many reusable shopping bags at home as they used to have old style plastic bags. Some have way more.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Itse

I think there's even a so-called law about this, but I can't find the name of it now. (It originated in the steam engine era I think. When steam engines started to become smaler, more efficient and used less coal, they also became vastly more popular and thus the total amount of coal use skyrocketed.)

It's called the rebound effect.

[TurnedTheCorner]

And pylon brings the discussion full circle.