Have we learnt ANYTHING over the last decade?

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Does anyone remember 2010? How different things were back then. A time when Donald Trump was that random TV presenter who appeared on Home Alone once. A time when a coalition government in Britain felt like political chaos. A time of those weird neon buttoned t-shirts from Topman that everyone used to wear (what was that about?).

It was also a time when minimising paper waste was one of the core environmental issues in public discourse. I was at school in 2010, and I remember whole lessons being dedicated to the importance of using the recycling bin for waste paper, and not printing things off unnecessarily. Given that paper comes from trees, it was considered a vital step in the fight against deforestation to use as little paper as possible. This is entirely sensible.

This is a new decade though, and while we may have had the sense to see past those hideous t-shirts, our environmental rationale appears to have stalled. We now live in a time where McDonalds are lauded as environmental heroes for producing millions of paper straws, and Colgate are congratulated for issuing bamboo toothbrushes. Where on earth did we go so wrong?

Before anyone issues a lecture on the dangers of plastic, I certainly recognise that a paper straw is preferable to a plastic straw. But the idea that mass-producing straws out of a limited resource is the way to solve the climate crisis is absolutely bonkers. Why is nobody screaming that we don’t need bloody straws in the first place? Homo Sapiens survived for millennia without small tubes to drink our liquids through. I’m sure we would do just fine if they disappeared again.

“Why is nobody screaming that we don’t need bloody straws in the first place?”

The example of switching from plastic to paper straws neatly highlights how divorced our current mentality is from the consequences of our consumption habits. We still see environmental catastrophe as a problem we can ‘buy our way out of’; one of an infinite list of issues which can only be solved by buying more stuff. In a way this is hardly surprising, given that consumption has been drilled into our heads since at least the 70s. Unfit? Buy supplements. Unpopular? Buy clothes. Unhappy? Buy a holiday. Our culture of consumption was only ever going to have one solution for climate degradation – buy, buy, buy.

The unfortunate reality is, however, that this culture of consumption is exactly what has caused the climate crisis, and therefore cannot possibly be used to solve it. Our desire for more meat, more buildings and more ‘stuff’ has led to earth’s delicate web of biodiversity being thrown completely out of whack. The amazon is burning so we can eat more steak. The ice caps are melting so we can use more electricity. And the oceans are dying so we can wrap everything in plastic. There is only one viable solution to this crisis – stop consuming so much stuff.

‘Environmentally friendly’ products are a sinister Trojan Horse, convincing us to relax and consume more, turning a blind eye to the astonishing and irreparable damage we are causing. Yes, biodegradable wrapping over vegetables is better than a normal plastic wrap. But nobody needs wrapped vegetables. We need to radically rethink our current ideas about how much stuff we need and how often things need replacing. Reuse for as long as possible, mend where possible, and only buy when absolutely necessary. These need to be our axioms of consumption if we are to make any progress in the fight against climate change.

Hopefully we will reach a point soon where the mere idea of a straw, irrespective of material used, is as ridiculous as those Topman t-shirts. If not, then God help us all…