Office manager sending a mail that all spaces now only have "sustainable vegan leather" furniture, "to carry responsibility for the planet and commit to a greener company image".

You mean you bought uncomfortable plastic chairs.

Vegan leather is just fucking plastic.

Not all plastics are bad, but in this case it's a very toxic plastic, a PVC softened with phtalates and stabilized with cadmium stearate, produced cheaply in a country with no regards for public health or the environment.

It's about as sustainable as munching down a vegan quinoa avocado salad in a private jet on a transatlantic flight.

There are moments where I'm glad that I'm still working from home, because I would have planted that ugly fucking desk chair straight into the equally ridiculous power-slurping hipster "sustainable vertical herb garden" with its 500 watt growlight bulbs.

I mean, don't misunderstand me: I'm very much in favor of reducing the environmental footprint of the company.

I'm also not against people choosing veganism to reduce their carbon footprint or whatever.

I'm just so sick of the green washing marketing bullshit, of all the fake shit.

If you wanna be a bunch of good peeps buy some second hand super-durable Herman Miller chairs at a bankruptcy auction. Save some stuff that's still perfectly good from being trashed.

But yeah, dragging slightly used HM Aerons into an office isn't as cool as "vegan leather".

@bittersweet
I will sound too much portuguese, but CORK!
Why they don't use cork as vegan leather?

It's comfy, warm in the cold, cold in the warm, breaths well (you don't have your skin glued to the chair), it's durable (unlike synthetic leather where after sometime the leather breaks apart).

In Portugal, we have a lot of things that would be made with leather, made with cork.

(A side note: we don't kill cows for leather, we kill cows for food. So if we don't buy real leather, the only difference is that the leather will go to the trash)

@AtuM Is an electric cargo bike a car?

@pmso
Bom, este problema é muito difícil. Take into consideration that growing trees require water, and when they're cut down they release some of he CO2 they had extracted through their lifetimes. This impact could be reduced if these trees are ev entually replanted.

So far, I believe that the most sustainable option is simply not to buy anything new. If your old chairs are broken, try repairing them, and if that fails, buy second-hand.

Then use the money you saved up to lobby for climate action, like some regulations that reduce car usage and promote public transport, or make meat more expensive and subsidize vegetarian/vegan alternatives to reduce their cost.

@eo2875
Cork trees don't need to be cut down (and best cork come from the oldest trees).

The cork is simply the bark that grows

https://youtu.be/f5s_g-Sdq08

@pmso oh wow didn't know that. It does sound like one of the best alternatives

Replacing already bought chairs in good condition is a mistake in itself. The chairs are already here and in use. The most sustainable way is continue using them.

Prach it
That and nuclear power

God I hate this so fucking much... The idiots run the world. And if you dare speak up to them with logic and facts, they'd just tell you "that's just your opinion man"... Absolutely unbelievable. People solving problems in all the wrong ways because actually learning the subject first is too much work compared to virtue signalling.

@Condor
You remembered a conversation I had with a colleague about COVID 15 days ago.

He was saying that the number of infected was increasing too much (we jumped from under 5000 to over 10000 ), but at least the number of deaths wasn't increasing too much (it was 70s, now it's over 200).

I was explaining to him how first the person is infected, gets worse, go to hospital, go to intensive care and dies. Nobody gets infected and dies next day. It takes around 15 day from infection to death.

He simply replied: "I don't know. Let's leave it to the specialists"

@pmso Well to be fair, the tests also take a while to come in. From the moment you get tested at a test site, they are stored there until they can be collected and brought to a central lab. The logistics of that vary by country. The US for example uses airplanes. The tests themselves can also take a while... Long story short, it can take a week or two for significant events to be reflected in the stats. It is why I don't believe in real-time stats like some countries *cough* Germany are doing. They just make the stats inaccurate and lower than they really are (you can check this by querying during the afternoon, and then again in the evening). There is also a very crude idea I'm thinking of.. dead people don't infect. They are not the people we should worry about. It's those that don't wear their masks in public spaces, possibly infected, spreading the disease, blissfully unaware that they even have it.

FWIW, I found these videos on this matter very interesting:

- https://youtube.com/watch/...

- https://youtube.com/watch/...

- https://youtube.com/watch/...

@Condor Without wanting to derail this rant too far: From my personal experience in Germany public testing takes about 3 to 5 days for the results to be sent, in hospital (patient) testing the results are usually given within a day. But anyway, it doesn't matter if one particular day is better or worse (or if the some lab worked more efficiently that day). The last 7 day (or weekly) average is much more insightful.

And yeah updating some web stats whenever some lab reports something is just stupid. Create a db dump daily and provide that. Or just regenerate your static site with the new data.

As someone who study environmental and renewable energy tech, this is one of my biggest fear. That people are dumb enough to not understand the difference between veganism and environmentalism. Vegan doesn't equal sustainable or environmentally friendly!! The only sustainable side of veganism is that you eat less meat than the general population, PERIOD. The rest of veganism are just pure sentimental stuff! Not based on legit science. Not the healthiest diet. Human need to eat meat in portion! What's wrong with the western world is that people eat meat even for snacking and that's what needs to stop. Just that. Eeeeugh. Can you please tell that person about vegan leather is actually more harmful than real leather to that person please?? Humanity owe you one.

@ggtiono wait! There are meat snacks and I haven't heard of them?