I grapple with this all the time. my wife is very eco-conscious and will scrub out a deeply moldy glass jar just to recycle it (whether the recycling system works is a separate issue here). On one hand there is some truth to the fact that if we all just work together to do the right thing the world is a much better place to live in. Sometimes i don't want to do this (scrub gross shit out) because i'm lazy, other times it feels futile. or maybe its just that the latter is a good excuse to be lazy.

I'd argue that even thinking about the idea of recycling and eco-conscious behavior is something only the already wealthy (with respect to the rest of the world) can do. There are plenty of developing nations where consumption and pollution run rampant and unchecked and unregulated which do tons more damage than me throwing 1 glass jar into a semi well managed landfill.

I mean theres just so many facets to this - does recycle work, does collective action work, or are corporations the real devils here doing much more bad than the collective at large?

i feel that the only way to change anything is through government level policy (which also feels futile), but individual actions do little without policy+propoganda to disseminate the right message and change collective behavior.

Developing nations generally leapfrog by adopting the latest generation of developed world tech.

Imagine people saying they didn't want to adopt mobile phones because developing nations didn't have traditional telephones yet.

This applies to both green tech and to green regulations. They'll look to the EU and China for that as the US is going this one alone again. China recycles 30% of its plastic compared with 12% in the US. Presumably they look at it as an engineering problem to solve and not a fake culture war to protect the oil industry.

Slightly older data here but the trend and the major outlier of the US visible here:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-plastic-waste-recyc...

If you have a dishwasher that will get the jar plenty clean to be recycled and not smell up your house while it's waiting to be taken out.

> I'd argue that even thinking about the idea of recycling and eco-conscious behavior is something only the already wealthy (with respect to the rest of the world) can do.

On the other hand, growing poor behind Iron Curtain, thinking about not recycling glass jars was crazy.

The thing is wealthy societies just buy things. We were not only washing those jars but re-filling as well with what we have produced.

And I think same goes when one is 'eco-conscious'. Recycle sure, but buy less.