December 9, 2024
When you go to a coffee shop and get a hot drink to go, it usually comes with no lid on. Just the double-walled cup and its contents. I won't take a lid. I mean, is the lid really necessary at all? I suppose I can come up with a few reasons:
But it's not like I'm going for a fast jog under trees with stuff falling out of them in the dead of winter here. I'm probably just gonna go bring it home or maybe go for a walk. There's really just no need for me to have a lid. I actually prefer drinking without the lid, anyway. But I think most people do take the lid. I'm not actually sure why this is. I know that before I thought about the waste I produce, I took the lid, too. But now that I know that plastic lid has to go somewhere when I'm done with it, I'm more inclined to leave it right there. My theory about why people take the lid is just because.. it's there. And it fits on the cup, so why not?
I think more people should use less stuff. Buy less stuff, too. But this is hard, honestly. Sometimes it really feels like you need that extra pair of jeans, or that nice-looking, limited time fall Starbucks cup. I mean, people will surely think you're cool if you have those. I do understand consumption from a social perspective in that way, and I'm certainly not immune to it. But there are some times when you have the opportunity to use less without impacting your life at all.
When you're confronted with "lid scenario" like this one, it's usually really easy to choose not to consume more. Just don't take the lid. When they give you a water bottle on the plane, don't take it (bring your own water). When you get an iced drink, don't take the straw. When you're grocery shopping and you only buy a few things, don't take the bag (it's ok to carry). When you get takeout, don't take the utensils (use the silverware you have at home). There are countless scenarios like this. Not taking a thing you can take is almost always the right move, and it won't actually make your life more inconvenient.
We've all seen the statistics saying how little of an impact each individual has, and how much corporations and billionaires do the real polluting. Well, I guess I don't know about billionaires, but this argument about corporations never made sense to me. The reality is, these corporations would not exist without you buying their goods (most of them). Target, Walmart, and other stores wouldn't produce random holiday crap if people didn't keep buying it and throwing it away after a year. Coca cola and bottled water companies wouldn't produce plastic bottles if nobody bought them. Sure, an individual consumer has no real power on their own, but this is not about an individual consumer, it's about a cultural shift.
If the dominating culture is to not buy plastic bottles, people won't buy them. There is absolutely value in not only practicing this yourself, but also repeating these values if you find them important. For every lid you don't take, it's a lid that doesn't end up in a landfill. If nobody takes the lids, the coffee shop will stop buying lids. If every coffee shop stops buying lids, then nobody will make lids and no lids will end up as waste. This probably won't happen, but that doesn't mean not taking a lid has no impact. It's not just the act of not taking the lid, but also the idea of consuming less.
The idea that individual actions won't make a difference because there are bigger effects out there is a heinous one. It is defeatist. It assumes the problem cannot be solved at all due to factors outside of any one individual's controls, so therefore no action should be taken by anyone to correct it. In other words, I can't fix it, so I won't try.
This is a sort of fallacy. We know that collectively, a large group of people all making the same decision can make a difference. However, that collective would not exist if not for all the individuals all making the same decision. One person voting doesn't make a huge difference, but the collective vote decides the election. It is clear, then, that an individuals actions surely are important, and no, you should not take the lid.