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Time-stamp: <2022-10-05 22:53>
My whole life I've been trying to Do The Right Thing. Increasingly, I am unable to determine what The Right Thing is.
I shop at the Unpackaged Store. Stuff that comes without packaging is weirdly twice as expensive as the packaged alternatives. Local, seasonal vegetables, they cost an arm and a leg compared to the apple from New Zealand. It's probably the correct price if I want everyone to be paid fairly and not externalize costs, but boy, I can only afford this because I have a good job. When I haul my expensive groceries home on my cargo ebike, along a narro, bumpy bicycle lane that surely leads to broken eggs unless I packaged them really well in the material I brought along, car traffic flows by on a smooth road -- when it flows, as the road is too narrow for all the parked SUVs and the ones being driven by angry people doing a quick shop at Lidl, yes I'll have a bag, thank you.
I bought a bamboo toothbrush at Unpacked Store. It's shit. Now I got an electric sonic toothbrush. My teeth and gums love it, but I feel like a fraud. They have packaged bamboo toothbrushes at Lidl, too. They're shit.
Vegan cold cuts. They taste just as good as the ones made out of meat, but are only available packaged in plastic. I haul the plastic trash to recycling on my cargo ebike, along with the spent tetra packs that held the pea-based milk substitute. Unpackaged Store has a bottled alternative, but it sours the coffee, and I pay 35 Euros for a kilogram of locally roasted unpackaged coffee.
When I moved into this house in 2011, I had the gas heating replaced with a modern gas heating. I isolated the roof and the windows. We use half as much gas now than when we moved in. I'm still fucked because it's gas and one moron in Russia singlehandedly buggered us all. I turn down the base temperature bEcaUse wE aLl mUsT Do oUr sHaRe now, I take a bath once a month instead of once a week. I just came down with Covid despite all precautions, and shan't take a bath even though I feel cold.
I don't fly anymore. I feel bad when I'm riding even though riding my motorcycle gives me joy. My guitar is made in China. They don't build affordable guitars in these parts here anymore, they are all made in China or Indonesia. It's a good guitar, but are they getting paid enough, and is the wood sourced sustainably?
The world is being pulled away from under me. I try to do The Right Thing. It's driving me insane.
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✍ Wolfgang Mederle CC BY-SA 4.0
✉ <madearl+gemini@mailbox.org>
language: en
date: 2022-10-01 17:25
tags: climate change, ethics, consumerism