When I was a kid, I used to hate situations in which an older person would tell us, “When I was a kid, we used to………..” or “When I was younger……….” and so on. The polite listening, fidgeting while waiting for an escape route, secretive rolling of the eyes, and so on.
But I will now do what I used to hate…….when I was a kid, soda or pop (whatever you call it in your place) was sold in glass bottles. Those glass bottles were also a source of income, because when you bought the soda or pop, you had to leave a deposit of 2¢ to 5¢ per bottle. So we in the neighborhood gang would run around with the wagon and collect bottles in vacant yards, side of the road, ditches, beach, playgrounds, wherever, and turn them in for money. Which we used usually to buy candy and comic books. (I wonder if that also applied to beer…..never worried about it, because when I got to drinking age, beer was mostly sold in cans.)
So why can’t we return to glass bottles, or at least more glass bottles than are being sold now? Probably because the fossil fuel industry would have a hissy fit.
Over the span of nine months, an international team of volunteers sorted through 187,000 pieces of plastic trash collected from 239 cleanups in 42 countries around the world.
The results, released Tuesday, shows that these multinational food and beverage giants were the top 10 offenders:
Coca-Cola
PepsiCo
Nestlé
Danone
Mondelez International
Procter & Gamble
Unilever
Perfetti van Melle
Mars Incorporated
Colgate-Palmolive
In the U.S. specifically, a total of 70 cleanups determined that Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola were the worst corporate plastic polluters, in that order.
The three companies have each pledged to cut their packaging waste. Coca-Cola has a global goal to help collect and recycle the equivalent of 100 percent of its packaging by 2030. Nestlé aims to make 100 percent recyclable or reusable packaging by 2025. PepsiCo has a goal to design 100 percent of its packaging to be recyclable, compostable or biodegradable and to reduce its packaging’s carbon impact by 2025.
Full time work should entitle someone to enough pay for rent, food, bills, and leisure activities. Full time work for a full life wage. You put in your 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? You should be able to afford the basic shit you need in life, no matter where you work.
pisses me off that this is considered a radical statement.
Ben and Jerry’s isn’t making an empty advertising gesture. They company has supported Bernie Sanders, and made an ice cream flavor to raise awareness of global warming. They run progressive news stories on their websites and social media. They pay their workers a living wage. Even their brownies are sourced from a company that specializes in hiring people out of jail to help them get their lives back on track. They’re open supporters of socialism. I understand the idea of “no ethical consumption” but Ben and Jerry’s isn’t just adopting a political message for nothing.
Sure do love when i burst into tears first thing in the morning because of my parents callous disregard for my mental health and unwillingness to ever help me when i need it
If you would report an undocumented immigrant to ICE you would have reported me to the Nazis and I don’t fucking trust you
A note:
I live in a state where you “have to” report anyone you suspect of being undocumented (that wonderful hellhole of Arizona). Now in practice this law has fallen far short, thank goodness. But if you live in such a place and they start enforcing it, here is how you get around it:
Assume everyone who doesn’t speak English is visiting.
Never ask about their job, because if they tell you they work here then you know they’re not visiting. You see them a lot for several weeks or months? Hm. Someone in the family must be ill. That’s terribly tough. They always dress in old, ratty laborers’ clothes? I feel you, my dude, I can’t afford new clothes either, and my dad has the fashion sense of an aardvark, so sometimes it’s not even about “affording” them. They say they’ve been here for years? You must have misunderstood. Spanish isn’t your first language, after all. First and last name? It never came up, or you don’t recall–you meet a lot of people.
And then, if you’re asked: no, you haven’t seen anyone residing illegally in the United States. Just people visiting.
Very good very important addition
Essentially, this is the civil society version of a work-to-rule strike.
Don’t do more than is expressly asked of you, and do what you are asked with such an intense attention to protocol that not asking you at all becomes more effective than even bothering.
In this case:
“Have you seen an illegal immigrant?”
“Could you describe an illegal immigrant, officer?”
*officer describes a person who is in the country without appropriate paperwork, or who has crossed the border illegally*
“No, sir, I haven’t seen any illegal immigrant.”
And this is correct. You have NOT seen an illegal immigrant, because you have no way of knowing if Jose Fulano is here legally or not. And since you can’t see his paperwork (or lack thereof), and did not personally see him cross the border illegally, you are only answering precisely the question asked.
I’m not American, and I have like, three followers, but this is important.
The premise of minimum wage, when it was introduced, was that a single wage earner should be able to own a home and support a family. That was what it was based on; a full time job, any job, should be able to accomplish this.
The fact people scoff at this idea if presented nowadays, as though the people that ring up your groceries or hand you your burgers don’t deserve the luxury of a home and a family, is disgusting.
Also if a livable wage breaks the system then the system deserves to be broken.
anyway jeff bezos could eradicate homelessness. he could literally give each homeless person 100k and it would only take less than .5% of his entire wealth. what the actual god giving fuck
Why do you think they deserve it
Well shelter is a basic need, and would at the very least allow them a place where they can get back on their feet. Food water and shelter are necessary for a healthy body and psychology. There’s also the fact that they’re people too, and a little help goes a long way in making a decent community. There’s plenty of reasons
Yeah they need stuff, but why does every homeless person deserve 0.5% of someone’s income
You have five hundred apples, and just one day to eat them all.
You pass by a small crowd of hungry children, and decide you’d rather 455 apples go rotten than give them to some snotty brat who isn’t your problem.
It doesn’t matter how hard you’ve worked for your 500 apples, or that you aren’t the parent of any of those kids. in the moment you decide to walk away, it doesn’t matter why they’re hungry, or who owes who what.
You had the opportunity to help people, you had the ability to help people, you had the resources to help people. You had everything you needed to make a small, tiny little difference in someone’s life, and you decided not to.
What are you going to buy in your lifetime that’s worth more to you than your own humanity?
What are you going to buy in your lifetime that’s worth more to you than your own humanity
Reblogging for the very, very important lesson
Sometimes I wish there were a Hell if only for the visuals of a bunch of rich shit heads wandering around on fire asking “Where’s my money?!”
Okay, the thing when you are talking to someone whose reaction to ‘a relatively insignificant fraction of an absurdly wealthy person’s money could help a whole fuckton of people‘ is ‘what’s in it for the rich person?‘, you have to talk to them like you’re trying to explain it to a complete sociopath that was raised by an unspeakably alien being best described as a hybrid of a trust fund and colony of fire ants.
So you have to talk about things like ‘investing in a robust customer base and labour supply‘. I’ll start!
So the thing to bear in mind is that the people on the bottom layer of the economy are not just there for decoration. They participate in the economy, buying the products sold by the massive global corporations owned by God’s chosen people (the rich, obviously), and work in the facilities that make and distribute those products.
And people with no money cannot buy anything. So it’s a good idea to pay the relatively low cost of providing the homeless with a half-decent place to live, a stable food supply, and maybe decent health care if you want the process to work faster and more reliably; because then they can get back to fulfilling their purpose in life, which is obviously to serve as a tiny cog in the vast economic engine that allows the super-rich to collect yachts.
Okay, that’s my bit done. Anyone want to try their hand at explaining how allowing some upward socioeconomic mobility reduces the potential for violent revolution?
to all of the jewish people that may be reading this, i hope you and your families are safe today. i hope that you are able to grieve with your community and hold one to each other and hold each other up.
i am thinking of you all. i am thinking of our communities and our people.
ugh 