At this point in my life, I feel approximately zero guilt for my consumption in day-to-day life. The fact that plastic recycling has turned out to be ‘guilt-washing’ intentionally marketed as effective when it is not, and that the fossil fuel industry is in fact planning to RAMP UP plastic production (to compensate for future lowered fossil fuel for vehicles), and the fact that most polution (like 70%) is done by industry, not individuals… Force the externalities back onto the CORPORATIONS. Make them pay for the lifecycle of their products, instead of telling us that we somehow are the problem. Make them pay for clear-cutting by making it so expensive that it’s not viable compared to responsible managed forestry, with proper diverse tree-planting instead of monocultures. Fine them into oblivion if they clear an entire hillside, causing erosion and flooding. Now I’m still going to recycle my plastic like a chump, but it won’t make a difference. Nor will stopping use of wood pellets, since the vast majority of the damage is done by irresponsible logging by big corporations and our governments who won’t lift a finger to stop them.

I mean… It makes sense to use saw dust somehow. It’s there as a byproduct, and it makes sense to use byproducts as much as possible. But I feel like there’s ways we could use saw dust better than burning it. Technically you could call it carbon neutral to burn it thanks to iffy definitions. But you could make it a carbon sink, somehow. It’s way past my bedtime atm, so excuse me if alternatives might sound stupid but here we go. in compost/soil mixture. It holds water better than a lot of materials, as a mix, you might even be able to grow something in soil that would normally be considered too sandy/dry. a mixture in plastics, so as not to use as much plastic, and although I’m sure there would be side effects, but it could be perfect for a few specific uses. swamp/mangrove protection. Ok by now I’m pulling this out of my ass. Like I said, it’s far past my bedtime. But with loose soil, I feel like mixing in some saw dust would act as a binder, and slow erosion. So I’m not a scientist or anything, but there has to be a better use of saw dust than fucking binding it and burning it. On one level, at least they’re using it… I guess? But even being landfill, at least it would be a carbon sink, even if just a minor one.

The problem is that you can’t supply power plants at any scale using waste sawdust. They clearcut to make pellets to feed the power plants