With so many people sharing our planet even tiny decisions, when replicated countless times, play a huge role in the environmental degradation we are seeing today.
This is the 'The Tyranny of small decisions'. It is a force subtly pushing many aspects of our lives. From democracy, to environmental degradation, to market forces, it's an invisible, and often destructive, force driven by small, individual choices.
It's causing trash to float freely down the Thames, 'fat bergs' to clog sewers in cities across the globe, and climate change.
Fortunately, knowing the root of a problem is the first step to solving it. And the second step of the solution to this problem?
It's you. It's me. It's us. It's the individuals that are making the small decisions.
This is where the seed of hope comes into play. If we have hope, we believe we can make a difference, and as a result we are empowered to make decisions conscious of the world around us.
By simply avoiding those small, easy options that we know have undesirable effects, we can have a huge positive impact. Let’s empower ourselves in the knowledge that by avoiding plastic bags and coffee cups, or driving to the shops and then buying a steak for dinner or buying a new t shirt even though we already have 20, we are saving the world.
To put the power of the individual into numbers, let's turn to coffee cups. They're obviously not the biggest problem we are facing, but more of a symptom of a throwaway culture that is simply not sustainable, especially when there are 7.6 billion of us, and plastic is involved.
Paper coffee cups were invented in 1960, and have now become ubiquitous. 2.5 billion now being used per year in the UK, which is 5000 every minute! Despite being called 'paper', their plastic lining makes recycling very difficult, so under 0.1% of paper cups get recycled. This hopefully will rise; check out this great news report about a paper cup recycling plant.
CO2 emissions is another aspect of the life cycle of a paper cup. Despite there being many articles online about the environmental costs of coffee cups, it's has been very difficult to find a scientifically backed amount of CO2 emitted per cup. Estimates I've found online range from 0.1kg to 0.55kg of CO2 emissions per cup, meaning something as simple as swapping from disposable to reusable will save between 36.5kg and 200kg of CO2 from entering our atmosphere! Swap the cow's milk for oat milk as well, and you'll be laughing..
And that's just coffee cups! Spread that environmentally conscious decision making to all areas of life, and feel powerful, knowing that it really is helping the world. Check out this link for some quick ideas.
Of course, individual decision making is only the start. Ultimately, people, governments and markets will all need to be involved in solving this problem. After all, choices of individuals drive government policy change and alter market forces, just like policy and market forces alter individual choices. To successfully escape the tyranny of small decisions, we require a three-pronged attack starting with our decisions.
Thank you for reading! I would love to hear your thoughts if you have any, so feel free to comment.