14
TLDR: in this particular case, where the buyer lives very close to the shop, it's likely that buying in a brick-and-mortar shop has a lower carbon footprint compared to buying online.
Online shopping may become greener when the distance to the shop is more than 14 - 50km (depending on your shopping behavior and on which scientific study you consult).
I ...
10
It depends on your definition of sustainable. Your question doesn't have an absolute answer as stated. Sustainable can refer to an individual, a community, a region, a country, or civilization as a whole. It is also used to make reference to the effect on the environment (which can become very controversial).
If you make your money from the local community ...
9
Usually its around .5-10 Watts depending on the make/model/size etc. I would recommend getting a kill-a-watt meter and checking a variety of monitors to get a rough idea of the average. Then you could bring that up with regard to yearly savings. A 3 Watts average across 20 monitors per year is not nothing.
7
I would argue that by using non-dairy you are already putting yourself into the top 20% of low impact because any plant based alternative to dairy is significantly better than dairy itself.
As you have pointed out the question of one type of plant over another then becomes quite subjective.
The only other thing you could consider is looking at the attitude ...
7
A 50m garden hose weighs about 5-6kg (e.g this one). That's largely PVC. So a 30ft hose will be about 1kg of PVC.
Plastic hose repair connectors are (according to Amazon) 18g of polypropylene. A brass one is around 100g.
Brass, PVC and Polypropylene all have similar embodied energy - around 60-70MJ/kg (reference here) and hence similar CO2 emissions per ...
7
I'm going to focus on energy and carbon emissions because that's what I know best. Anyone wanting to add waste generation and other considerations please feel free.
Chad is right that the question depends first on how your kids live and where you decide to live. Geography and economy are very important variables. A study by Chris Jones at UC Berkeley ...
6
First of all, I think there are two very good reasons why there are many different labels that rate only a specific aspect of a product or look at a limited set of products:
It is much easier than taking everything and every product into account.
A lot of research is needed to continuously assess products. Products change all the time so your rating should ...
6
No. Sometimes yes, but often enough no - so that looking at whether a brand is 'luxury' or 'supermarket' is not a good replacement for looking at the actual sustainability of the product.
I can't cite a single, unified source, but when I read independent test reports of a variety of products, price or the fact there's a recognised brand is a poor indicator ...
5
If a store offers a publicly accessible rubbish bin, then it would be ethical to ask the store for permission to discretely transfer their product to your own containers inside or near the store and discard the packaging in their bin. In some cases it's already normal to discard packaging near or in the store, such as in a food court or mall.
Your suggested ...
5
I was able to find several different news articles discussing this topic:
"Paper towels least green way of drying hands, study finds" - The Guardian
"Electric Hand Dryers vs. Paper Towels" - Slate
"The Use and Abuse of Paper Towels" - The New York Times
The most thorough treatment I found comes from an MIT study*, referenced by The Guardian: "Life Cycle ...
5
I guess making such a label is something that anyone with a phone and a bit of money can do. Recognition from both manufacturers and customers is really "all you need", but anyone involved in marketing knows how difficult that is.
The main problem I see with an evaluative label is the following
How do you convince the manufacturer to stick your 2/10-star ...
5
Whether repairing or replacing is cheaper varies a lot between situations.
You wouldn't buy a new bike or car because of a flat tire.
Depending on the hole and your DIY abilities, replacing the tube or tire or patching are the usual ways to deal with this.
But putting in a replacement zipper into a well-worn jeans is a different situation as the repair ...
4
Let's keep things practical.
If two of your hoses get too short, then you would be able to patch them together to get a longer hose.
If your most-patched hose has 6 patches on it (which cost $5 each) and the cost of a new hose is $30, then it's probably about time to retire the patched hose so that you can reclaim the patches for re-use.
However, the ...
4
I cannot answer the questions completely but I have experience in Coconut cultivation and processing. In our part of the world (Southern part of India), Coconut farming is very sustainable since most of the process is manual and Coconut grows very well here without special care. Extraction of Coconut milk is very labor intensive and uses some machinery. The ...
4
In some locations, the overall cost of domestic electricity & gas (not gasoline) is not solely dependent on usage.
This can arise in locations where electricity and gas bills have two charges, the first being a service or utility charge that is charged to every household irrespective of usage, because it's a fixed cost. The other cost is for usage of ...
4
The discrepancy you find is about 30 %, and is probably in the range that you have to expect.
The Report on a fair energy label for consumers "CLOSING THE ‘REALITY
GAP’ – ENSURING A
FAIR ENERGY LABEL
FOR CONSUMERS" by CLASP, ECOS, EEB and Topten, 2017 says:
Fridge energy consumption is tested and reported according to a norm (EN
62552:2013) that basically ...
3
Sustainable Consumption and Responsible Consumption are complementary terms. Perfect sustainability means minimal environmental burden, which often leads to a reduced quality of life and sometimes, ironically, increased input consumption. Responsible consumption takes into account more factors including quality of life & resource use over time but still ...
3
Perhaps it's just a simple difference: It would be irresponsible to deny a plastic bottle of water to a person dying of thirst, however it is unsustainable to use plastic bottles that go to landfill.
Therefore you could argue that some responsible consumption is unsustainable.
TL;DR?
I see sustainability as being a long term issue; we need to change our ...
3
Monitors typically have 3 power levels:
On -- you're looking at one.
Standby -- screen is black, but the electronics are active.
Sleep -- circuits are off except for a small one to monitor the line to the computer
Off -- it turns into a fancy cookie tray.
I'm using a Dell U2412 21" monitor. I went to their web site and looked up the specs.
Max 72 watts, ...
3
Costs and consumers shopping for low prices. Most "stuff" is made in massive quantities in factories where process and other types of engineers have refined the steps to produce an item. Each person on the floor needs to know only one small bit of the operation. Alternatively, to repair something, a capable service man needs to know all aspects of the item. ...
2
I decided to make a spreadsheet. The rows are the number of holes over which you are going to run the strategy. The columns are your strategy: buy a new hose every time, patch one hole and then on the next buy a new hose, patch 5 holes, 10 holes etc. Here's the result:
So for example if you get 10 holes, all the strategies that replace after less than 10 ...
2
Re "...the higher price of prestigious brands is usually dictated by costs such as craftsmanship, design and marketing...", I have to disagree, at least as a general rule. Perhaps more is spent on marketing to convince the gullible that say a Cadillac Escalade is more "prestigious" than the virtually identical Chevy Tahoe, but will it really last longer or ...
2
tldr: Look at power rating of different appliances (show in W or kW typically), or most simply try to buy Energy Star appliances.
The first thing that you should know is that if you are trying to be as sustainable as possible the manufacture of the products must be considered. If the appliance has a short life or low energy consumption throughout its life ...
2
This is not ethical.
From an economic ethics point of view, you are throwing away your own trash (which you bought and thus acquired a responsibility for) in someone else's dumpster. This basically amounts to stealing, since someone else is paying to have that trash disposed of.
From an environmental ethics point of view, you are not reducing the amount ...
2
I don't think so and I do not think it would be an effective statement. The store will likely have practical reasons for packaging and could not change their ways even if they wanted to. And they would probably be happy to dispose of your trash for you as long as you buy from them. But ethically, I would say once you buy it, it is your responsibility.
For ...
2
Where I live, stores do not recycle as thoroughly as people do. Therefore, when I buy meat on a Styrofoam tray, I want to put that (rinsed) tray in my home recycle, not the stories generally mixed-together trash or garbage. So your approach isn't going to be effective as a short term way to reduce food packaging in the landfill.
Further, the people who take ...
2
This is a complex issue and one that's hard to address succinctly. It gets into the larger matter of media and its role and interaction with society, which is profound. This includes political and social elements going far beyond consumerism and consumption, though those are part of the dynamic.
For a short answer: advertising is not the only problem, ...
2
The issue is not advertising per se, but what drives it. In a capitalist system, businesses pursue higher revenues and lower costs in order to maximize profits. Advertising is a part of this system which businesses use to entice customers to spend as much money as possible, thereby increasing revenue.
To change advertising so that it doesn't lead to ...
2
It is a question of man hours used with technology against man ours (your time used in making repairs) without technology. If you worked in a factory you could make a hundred items in the time it would take you to repair one item. Even with a household sewing machine, you couldn't keep up with the speed of factory output. Everyone who works for a wage is in ...
1
Steps that would make a difference:
Regulation
A: A truth in advertising policy. Go after them hard for deceptive practices, especially 'life style' ads. (The attractive young lady does NOT come with the red convertible.) Hold them to the exact literal truth of anything said on public media.
B: Tax advertising.
C: Go back to regulating media. When I ...
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