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Comment by webwielder2 | Hacker News Reader

Let alone headphones? You could throw away a pair of AirPods every day and it would still constitute a tiny fraction of what (Americans) produce in waste on a yearly basis.

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"It doesn't matter how much garbage I produce, everyone else makes way more!"

Replace "everyone" with "large corporations" and I think it's a pretty sound argument.

Uuuugh. This line of thinking, though rooted in good intentions (hold corporations responsible for better behavior) is deeply flawed.

Corporations don't exist in a vacuum. They have customers they're serving. We don't get to just pretend our behavior doesn't matter because some bogeymen (corporations) are doing worse things, then continue to voluntarily hand our money to those very same corporations.

We (individuals) bear responsibility, too. We vote with out dollars. Yes, we can't control the other 7.7 Billion people on the planet. But we can control our own behavior, and lead by example.

I like this line of thinking too, but there should be a line drawn somewhere between consumer's responsibility and law maker's responsibility to hold corporations accountable for their environmental impact. It is not a single person at home dumping pollution into a river or factory smoke into the air. And it's downright difficult for an average consumer to know what impact each option for a purchase has on the environment.

I think it's an argument somewhat like the "don't water your lawn in a drought" argument - even in aggregate, domestic/consumer impact is miniscule. 2005 numbers say that domestic water use is 8.5% of freshwater use, and of that, irrigation is at most 5.3% (the "other" category). Yet we in California were told to let our lawns die or given money to convert to high-efficiency landscape.

An average shower uses 17 gallons of water. A single pound of almonds uses 1,900 gallons.

Anyway, all this to say that I think the GP's argument is convincing.

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