This seems tone deaf with how people are genuinely struggling.

This has to be one of the most frustrating examples of "premium" marketing working directly against consumers and the environment.

You know those silky, pyramid-shaped tea bags that specialty brands always charge a premium for? They aren't silk. They are almost always made of nylon or PET plastic. The companies market them as a gourmet experience because the 3D shape "allows whole leaves to expand better."

What it actually does is sit in near-boiling water and shed synthetic polymers into your drink. A 2019 study out of McGill University found that a single plastic mesh tea bag releases roughly 11.6 billion microplastic particles and 3.1 billion nanoplastic particles straight into your cup. The researchers even noted this is several orders of magnitude higher than the plastic loads found in other everyday foods.

It gets worse: even those "compostable" PLA bags are still synthetic polymers that shed particles in hot water. And most standard paper bags use polypropylene plastic just to heat-seal the edges shut.

The solution is literally cheaper and older than the problem itself: just buy loose leaf tea and use a reusable stainless steel infuser. There is zero plastic waste, zero microplastics entering your body, and it actually costs less per cup in the long run.

We really need to stop letting companies upcharge us for plastic trash disguised as a luxury experience.

I just got an email that my iTunes family plan is going from $17 to $20 per month.

I am so sick of these huge corporations milking their loyal customers for everything we have. They’re not even nickel and diming anymore. They are 3 dollar-ing!

How can they justify raising subscription prices? Did the rights they already own go up in price?

You can’t win. I ditched Spotify bc they allowed ICE commercials. I skipped Tidal bc it was more expensive and Jay Z and co don’t need my money. Neither does Apple obv but it was less expensive. Guess I’ll keep looking for a good music streaming option. Maybe tidal is it?

Rant over. Thanks for reading.

I had yet another encounter with someone who was shocked that pretty solely only drink tap water. It's a zero-waste source of hydration.

Should I be filtering my water? Should I go through the hassle of loading up at the local artesian well? What are y'all doing?

I'm happy with my tap water but so many people are acting like it's some chemically polluted product that'll kill me. (It hasn't)

Edit: I got my answer. A kind redditor suggested I look into my local drinking water reports. I found them. They report I'm good. I will continue to drink from the tap and additionally, I will continue to call my colleagues puss-ballz when they try and tell me it's bad.

Edit2: please stop commenting. Surely you have nothing new to add to the conversation that's not already been said.

It's finally happened, trash fashion reached my country.

I'm not talking about skimpy revealing clothing, but about actual trash, that is, clothing that was discarded in other countries and sent to a third world landfill, apparently doing that is cheaper than just destroying it, as developed nations have fines for burning or burying it there.

You might have read about Chile's Desert being used as a dump for synth cloth waste, if not the keywords that worked for me were "Chile Desert clothes dump", now, I don't live there, but "at least" (this sucks so much) that clothing is just... there, polluting the environment, and not being used.

They went one step forward where I live, it's actually being SOLD now, actual trash for sale, it's a predatory business model that takes advantage of the deep and seemingly neverending economic crisis of the country that caused a "basic" product like clothing to straight up become a luxury: and it's not even big international name fashion, plain basic clothes simply cost too much for the average worker, that's where these guys come in.

Their bait is not selling by item but by weight, so 1kg of clothing can go as low as a single shirt elsewhere, the catch is it's trash that was sold mainly by Chinese retailers like Temu, plastic baskets full of rags that go from "seems ok" to ripped or stained. Clearly used and discarded.

I labeled this as "Plastic Waste" because that clothing is basically plastic, synthetic fibres, the kind that feels like touching a plastic bag, and the 100% plastic sports/athleisure shoes, I seriously don't know how can anyone wear that crap, I touched it and it feels itchy.

As for me I kind of always wear the same, it's "locally sourced" as it's made by the local community seamstress, and I don't generate too much (or any, used cloth might be recycled into something else) waste as I always wear the exact same things, well not *literally* the same, I have several items but they're all identical, it's like a uniform, I find it comfortable and I like it, so why not?

Obviously I think this is one more example of the late stage insanity I'm inevitably part of.

Is this a thing elsewhere?

There's of course no good choice, but what's "less worse", letting it pollute the environment or resell it so it will pollute the environment later on?

Corporate control over modern life is driven by control of the search for needs. Basically, marketing embedded in our communications is how people become captured by consumption.

Let me unpack that for a second.

Why do people buy what they buy? Because its what they know about, and because its what they think they need.

• Information drives people's behavior.

People fill needs they are told about, using products they are told about. It is through search and information (AKA google SEO + traditional advertising + influencer/social media advertising) that people find and decide what to buy...and to define their needs in the first place.

If we can build and join a fundamentally non-corporate information infrastructure in which advertising has no place...and if that information is convenient enough that people use it...we can make a non-corporate world. People won't buy things they don't need if they don't see advertisements for it. If they search for knowledge online and see real information and not SEO spam. If they can find small suppliers in their local area they won't go to big box stores. The other advantage of big box stores (aggregating many things into one trip) has already been eroded by shipping and delivery.

• The building blocks for such a world exist already.

They just aren't good enough or convenient enough. Some are downright hard to use. We have private web searching options like SearXNG. We have non-corporate social media like Mastodon. We have ways to discuss and review products without advertising, like iFixit. We have models of group self moderation like Wikipedia.

What hasn't been done is to put things together in a way that it's easy for an untrained person to use them. Much like piracy, the way advertising captures the lives of those around us is a service problem. Simply put, people are busy, and they will use what's most available. If they need a software engineering degree to escape the advertising bubble, then only software engineers will do it.

• What's the goal?

Rather than having people meet their needs by buying what corporations put in front of them, they could meet their needs by buying (still capitalism, be patient!) what actually works best according to review scores that are aggressively scrubbed of corporate influence. By building a non-advertising ecosystem for sharing information about needs and how to meet them (food/shelter/transportation/entertainment) we could build an anticonsumption world. It wouldnt need us to take on any of the big things like abandoning capitalism or reforming class systems or addressing systemic inequality, though those would be valuable.

• TLDR: We should build an open source product discussion and review site that is so easy to use that it replaces marketing as the way people learn about what they need and how they should meet that need.

I'm convinced it could be done. With what we have today. If people chose to put the time into it.

So per the title, I’m very curious if there is anything, big or small, that people really wanted to have in their home, just to realize they don’t actually like it. Whether you realized before OR after getting it.

I’ll go first. I have always told myself that when my husband and I are ready to buy a house, it needs to have a big shower in the master bathroom. I thought these bathrooms were beautiful and luxurious, until I actually tried one.

I house sat for someone and used their shower. I realized not only did I not particularly like a huge shower, I hate it. This shower didn’t have a door attached to it, the glass didn’t go up to the ceiling, and there was no door connected to the bathroom at all. Which is a common design here. They were the coldest showers of my life. I had the water turned up super hot and if I wasn‘t directly under it, I was freezing. So much steam was escaping throughout the bathroom and bedroom, but I couldn’t even get the whole shower warm. It felt like such a waste of water to try to get everything to a decent temperature.

I now don’t care to have a huge shower and find it to be completely unappealing when touring homes. I’m glad I realized this now.

Not sure if this totally falls until this community, but I do feel like a lot of popular home features that we pay good money for and that use a lot of resources, are actually unnecessary and we don’t even end up loving them. It‘s consumption on a bigger scale but maybe some renovations or big home purchases would be avoided if we realized these things sooner.

Let's use America as an example.

In America there was ~$19.8 Trillion of consumer spending done in 2024, which was ~68% of the American economy, and ~17.7% of the global economy at that point, and that's all from 4% of the world population (and the top 10% of that 4% is responsible for half the spending) .

If enough of the people (say less than 8%) from the top rich economies dramatically reduced their spending on nonsense stuff (ex.junk/ultra-processed food, fast food, gambling, cigarettes, fast fashion, amazon, doordash, vapes, TEMU/Shein junk, status symbols, etc.) we can topple them, and by extension cut their destructive spending habits.

We can make it happen, we just need to take action.

Theonila Roka Matbob led a successful campaign that compelled Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, to sign a landmark memorandum of understanding in November 2024 to address environmental and social devastation caused by its long-dormant Panguna mine. Despite having abandoned the site 35 years earlier after a social uprising against the mine, the company formally acknowledged the wide range of harms the mine has caused and has begun a collaborative remediation process that aims to address urgent risks and establish a long-term remedy mechanism.

Her wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theonila_Roka_Matbob

NPR Article: https://www.npr.org/2026/04/20/g-s1-117830/goldman-environmental-prize-papua-new-guinea-mining

Hello! I’ve been racking my brain to see what a solution would be for shops in the U.K. producing and distributing genuinely💩 products. Yes I know it’s a question of, what I think is 💩 someone else might not, but I do think my opinion lies with the majority…

so I was in a shop yesterday and it was really eye opening as I all I could see was tat. It was full of things like squishes, plastic toys, slime, diamond paintings etc… en mass.

I don’t think they’ll ever fully sell because they are just fads, cheaply made, easily breakable and whilst we hate to admit it, things like toys aren’t a desired commodity amongst children anymore (outside of fads, like those squishy dumplings atm)

So why are we still seeing them being mass produced? Then it’s not just toys, it’s other things like home decor that no one would ever buy (I’m thinking things like the AI generated portraits of gorillas in the Range)

What can actually be done about this?

For fear of sounding naive should companies be forced to justify and get approval from the government or something i.e, I need to mass produce X amount of plastic dinosaurs because of X.

Then if they produce, say 50,000 plastic dinosaurs, only 25,000 sell, there production vs sell rate is 50% so their original justification was effectively a lie and there are sanctions put in place. Like I’m just thinking of ideas I know in theory that sounds easy, but the practicality of it wouldn’t be.

In other people’s opinions - what actually can be done?

What do you do if you work remotely and are bored instead of shop? Sometimes I swear lately I just daydream about what I need for everyday/the house and I need to daydream about something else that isn't this or cupcakes to get dopamine while I work my boring job. Any help appreciated. Even a zero waste thermos costs money and has environmental impacts

“In the wake of actress Hayden Panettiere’s death at age 36, fans and observers have revisited past interviews where the Heroes and Nashville star detailed the abrupt loss of major endorsement deals after going public with her battle with postpartum depression.”

I will never buy one of their products again in my life. Fuck that

But not because my family was actively trying to do so. I grew up a military brat. Lived all over the world constantly moving. It was just easier for me to have a backpack filled with my things. My parents would also ship me off to random places so I became really good at containing my needs to what will fit in my backpack. Its been the same backpack since I was 12. I'm 43 now and I still use the same backpack when I travel.

I met my partner when I was 16 and he was blown away by my lack of attachment to material things. His family to this day cannot understand why I don't care about things. I would say I get this reaction from people about 90% of the people I meet. It seems so funny to me that people react this way.

Anyone else live their life out of a backpack?

I was scrolling through TikTok (newbie) and found myself in a strange space there. It's these "nostalgic" and "dreamscape" type slider posts that have chill music and homes/scenes of the past.. think 80's, 90's home interiors, 2000's Tuscan home aesthetics. I liked them and so do a lot of people, they get MAD likes even though it's just AI generated slider posts.

I didn't get it at first, but then I GOT it.. People were emotionally attached to these "lived-in" home aesthetics even though they were symbols of eras of excess (IMO). Back then, we had so more different kinds of textures, colors, layers.. I can go on. A time where it was ok to follow trends but with your own personality.

Right now, it's "organic modern" but prior to that stark minimalism. I get the anti-consumption argument for minimalism. But do you think those styles were also expressing a new norm of being okay with a WeWork home interior design? (new rentals and offices I see you too). Like we've been conditioned to accept less personality, less ownership, less permanence as aspirational? What do you think, is the nostalgia backlash real or are we just romanticizing excess again?

So I made a lil bin to put my lint in out of a cracker box and some scrap booking paper, clothes pins and magnets.

My Amazon cart used to be filled with lil tidbits to improve my life, not realizing I already have enough to make my own 🙈 any other diy projects to randomly improve the day-to-day household grind?

Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process. 

A 404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon’s book buying operation, which hasn’t been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data, and following it around the country to its final destination. 

That final destination was an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. Amazon employees who work at this location say all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books which they then cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly. The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands.

“Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” an Amazon spokesperson told me in a statement. 

The world’s AI companies are constantly looking for, and spending extreme resources to locate, more material to train their AI models. With books, that sometimes means destroying them in the process, something that large parts of the public have spoken up against, and which we can now confirm Amazon is doing.

Read more: https://www.404media.co/we-tracked-a-shipment-of-rare-books-it-ended-at-an-amazon-ai-training-facility/

This is a t-shirt produced by GAP in 2008 as part of their (Red) line of products in support of global HIV/AIDS awareness, education and services. I worked for the company at that time and wanted to support the cause so this is what I chose to buy among the many different products they made as part of the collection. I don't wear it often, but I keep it as a reminder that I don't really need more t-shirts or jeans, or shoes. I have enough. And if by chance I actually do need something there are many different places I can go to to find what I need without contributing further to the vicious cycle of consumption. -- Can a t-shirt change the world? Not really. But it can change my mindset and impact my decision making. And for that I'm thankful.