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Astonishing how education works

Lauren Singer is a zero-waste blogger based in New York City. She has produced so little landfill rubbish in four years that it isn’t even worth throwing away. Instead, she proudly displays it in a glass jar. She says one of the most common questions that people ask her is: “How do you have sex?” Are there condoms in the jar, they wonder. Or are zero-wasters too busy for sex, what with all that recycling and making their own toothpaste? On the contrary, Singer tells me. “Environmentalists are horny right now.”

Decades of teaching kiddies that they shouldn’t have casual unprotected sex – quite probably entirely reasonably – has led to them thinking you can’t have sex without barrier protection.

Which really, really, isn’t how it all works.

20 thoughts on “Astonishing how education works”

  1. She has produced so little landfill rubbish in four years that it isn’t even worth throwing away. Instead, she proudly displays it in a glass jar.

    Why are enviroloonies so manky? If it isn’t showing off their own waste products, it’s horrible ratty dreadlocks that smell like a doubly incontinent cat died on their head.

  2. Gunker – I’m a germophobe (which means I hate Angela Merkel), so it doesn’t matter how toothsome the Gaia-bint is, as soon as she showed me her poop jar I’d be out of there faster than John Bercow up a drainpipe.

    Also, you know it’s like the Amazon jungle down there.

  3. Steve,

    She looks alright to me.

    The problem with these people is that it’s very easy to do this if that’s also your job. You put in the time figuring out how to make your own toothpaste because you also make a YouTube video of it and sell advertising (probably of stuff that’s really bad for the environment) on the back of it. If you’re doing 9-5 on the Santander call centre, you’re going to get very bored spending half your weekend doing this shit.

  4. She doesn’t look manky to me. And she’s making a good living from her tree-hugging business so fair play to her.

  5. “I practise the rhythm method,” she says. “So I use an app to track my period. That has worked for me for the nine years I’ve been having sex.”

    Reminds me of the old chestnut:-

    Q. What do you call people who practice the rhythm method ?

    A. Parents.

  6. Nonsense–the veggies she eats will have cores, seeds and so forth–unless she eats peach-stones etc. She has produced far more waste than a jar full. Eco bullshit on Fly Agaric mushrooms (I was going to say steroids but ecofreakery …)

  7. It’s no landfill waste. Not what can be recycled, composted or flushed (? – not sure about her but some zero-waste bloggers actually do toilet-composting at home, though presumably when they’re out and about they have to flush it like the rest of us… and if they aren’t doing that then I dread to think).

    But yeah, what BoM4 said, as ever.

    Something to be said for a few people giving it a go and showing what’s possible. Not something we’re all in a position to do though, or likely to be in the immediate future.

  8. ‘She has produced so little landfill rubbish in four years that it isn’t even worth throwing away. Instead, she proudly displays it in a glass jar.’

    Rubbish!

  9. Reminds me of the agony aunt question, apparently asked in all seriousness in the graun some years ago:

    I am vegan and my boyfriend is not…

  10. Let me guess: rich parents, monthly allowance, mummy does her laundry and lots of meals and deals with her rubbish.

    Oh, and all her waste goes in recycling bins even if it contaminates batch – eg pizza box.

  11. Snowed here in South Carolina yesterday. Very rare for April.

    Surprisingly, my recycle center says put the pizza boxes in with the rest of the cardboard. Maybe grease doesn’t hurt the process. Or they just bury it all, anyway.

  12. @Bloke in Germany in Cambridge April 2, 2019 at 8:11 pm

    Snow (very wet, unpleasant snow) yesterday was at Hillend, Edinburgh dry-ski slope. Pentland hills still white this afternoon (webcam).

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