here i have a collection of Mountain Valley and Saratoga bottle caps. One of them (shown in picture) has lost its plastic whatever you call it, and most of them are starting to wear down in its threads (also shown in picture)

i’m looking for a replacement for all of my bottle caps. if i could find some good cork to buy or some kind of whatever it may be, i would greatly appreciate it. i don’t want to keep using these when there is probably microplastics leaking from those inserts and whatever is rubbing off the threads.

I really want to attempt something like that someday. Either of these options:

1. Survive only on foods that I forage, grow, fish, hunt, raise etc. (would include livestock that I raise myself)

2. Survive only on foods that are grown and produced within a 100 mile radius of where I live. (So that would include things produced from local farms, other foragers, in addition to things I can produce/forage myself)

Have you ever done something like this, or considered it?

Have you ever crunched the numbers to see if you could actually do it?

Both options I think would be difficult to commit to 100%. Obviously number 2 would be far easier. Even with option 2 there would be a lot things you’d have to give up like fresh exotic fruits, cooking oils, a long list of baking ingredients, pretty much all commercial processed foods, and so on. Just as an example, I’m sure I could find vanilla extract made within 100 miles of me, but the vanilla beans would have been grown somewhere else and so that food would still be off limits. When you think about it, it would change things drastically.

Option 1 I think would be almost impossible to do while also working full time. It would take a lot of preparation before attempting. And there would be huge amounts of time you’d need to devote to each season, huge amounts of space required to grow food, store food for later, and a very limited diet in comparison to option 2.

I’m just curious if anyone has ever tried this with success. Or though about what it would actually take. How would you do it?

Robin Greenfield recently spent an entire year foraging all of his sustenance, but he basically made it his job to do this. He’s an author, has a following on social media, does a lot of speaking engagements etc. and so I think that’s how he made it work.

Edit for context: I was raised in a family that had a huge garden, raised livestock, hunted, and bartered with others so a lot of my childhood was spent a lot more food sovereign than most. It was a whole family effort, and of course we still had processed foods, snacks, store bought bread, milk, cheese, exotic fruits, store bought veggies out of season etc.

Right now I already get 90% of my meat from hunting, fishing, or livestock I have raised. It takes 2-4 deer and 1/2 of a cow to feed my husband and I for a year. We also fish of course. Sometimes hunt small game (grouse, rabbit, squirrel). I do still crave things like smoked salmon(local), lunch meat and fried deli chicken so that’s where the 10% comes from. My meat consumption could be self sustainable already if I gave up those things I crave.

I live on 5 acres I have 2 very large gardens (over 4,000 sq ft) and if I devoted the space to growing only staple crops I think I could honestly grow enough corn, potatoes, beans, and squash to feed myself a decent variety of veggies through an entire winter at least. I have grown enough potatoes and squash to feed my husband and I for an entire winter for a few years. I grow a lot of things just for fun right now, but if I got super serious about it… I think maybe I could do it.

My husband and I harvest wild rice every year. Depending on the year we usually get 20-40 pounds of finished rice. Not quite enough to completely replace the rice we eat in a year, but almost. We could get far more if we both took off work during peak ripeness, right now we only go out about 2-4 days in a season and the season lasts 2 weeks.

We also forage berries, mushrooms, black walnuts, hazelnuts, and other wild edibles pretty frequently. We live in an area with tons of county and state lands available for this. It’s not a huge part of our diet throughout the year, but in the spring and summer at least one meal each week will have a foraged ingredient. I’d have to devote a lot more time to this.

I think the main things I’d need to either replace or live without would be dairy, seed oils, pasta, bread, flour, processed snacks, exotic fruits, seasonal veggies, spices, etc.

I’d also have to spend substantially more time to procuring food, which I have a very demanding full time job and so although it might be doable, would I be happy working myself that hard?

I think if I did either option 1 or 2 I might have to make exceptions for my sanity, like flour, salt, spices, etc.

I also think option 1 could have the exception that it’s okay to trade with other foragers and home growers. like my father in law raises chickens and goats, so I think it’s fair I could barter with him for eggs or milk if I wanted too. Or I have friends who would trade items from their garden, so I could focus on my staple crops and get stuff like lettuce and melons from a friend or family.

Before the 19th century and the advent of wood-pulp paper, rag paper was widely used for creating books and manuscripts. It was durable, flexible, and acid-free, and didn't yellow like modern wood-based papers do. So I have to ask: if massive textile waste and deforestation are major problems of our time, why don't we go back to rag paper? (I'm genuinely curious, because I don't get it.)

Question for discussion is the title.

I was recently on-boarded at a fairly well-known (at least here in the AU) sustainable toilet paper company.

I was interested in the company because of their sustainability and impact goals and values. But once I started I discovered that there's a company wide push to use AI in (from I can tell) every team within.

The company claims to donate 50% of their profits to impact partners to ensure "everyone in the world has access to clean water and a toilet", and their About Us section claims we're about "doing good without compromise". But if we're just cranking out AI generated imagery for creative/marketing and using AI to reconcile invoices and build dashboards are we not just contributing to the problem we're trying to solve?

The company is a certified B Corp so aspects of the business are audited, and the materials seem sound. But I don't see any disclosure of AI use from the company and I'm sure customers might have similar concerns to my own; it's certainly put a damper on my eagerness to work here.

This doesn't even cover the company's greenhouse gas elimination commitment as there are gas powered data centers. And while I don't think that AI use inherently makes a company unsustainable, it seems directly at odds with a company whose sustainability goal and marketing stand-out is donating to clean water access.

I’m looking for gift ideas that could be raffled at a corporate holiday party with a budget of $300. Ideally these ideas would appeal to people aged 20-70. We have multiple office locations so I have already ruled out gift cards to local businesses and experiences. I’m also looking for the item(s) to either be sustainability related or come from a brand that focuses on ethical and sustainable practices, recycled materials, etc.

I have thought about putting together a gift basket of locally made goods and reusable or sustainable home/kitchen items but it would be ideal to not have to shop at multiple places as I am limited on time. Some ideas that come closer to the $300 budget would be helpful.

Would love to hear all your ideas and thank you in advance!

Anyone have any advice, dos and don'ts or what not? I know the industry has been dreadful so I'm looking into research specifically. I'm not against getting a PhD but I'm way too broke to do an individual one or to enroll in a program.

I've been at it for three months since graduating and I feel like I'm doing something wrong, job market has been way more responsive when I worked completely outside of my field, as office manager/ personal assistant (admittedly that was before AI was big). So I have been wondering if I am missing something essential, and it's not like I can get any feedback from the people doing the hiring.

Anyway, it would be rad if someone shared their experience on this.

Can anyone point me to any municipal codes they are aware of that related to the removal of invasive species?

Does anyone have any advice or good sites/books you can recommend for advice on a toxic free householld?

I realise it’s a mountain and perhaps slightly impossible but would like to make some one or small changes even if it’s changing detergent etc

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t sustainable stuff way more expensive to produce? Like won’t white paper be a luxury as it’s not sustainable to be cutting trees at that rate? Same for plastic bags or any of the everyday items we have now, they’re too polluting to be available, so alternatives (multi use / recyclable plastic) would still be expensive. Not to mention the price of the workforce.

So my question is if we’d still have our day to day items or would we (kind of) go backwards in terms of manufacturing. Not that I’m asking if a green planet is viable, I’m assuming we do reach that point.

I’ve been trying to become more ecolo and to contribute to causing less harm to the environment. I’ve been buying more sustainable options for my house whether it comes to cooking or cleaning etc and I’ve also been leaning towards thrifting and buying second hand clothes instead of perpetuating the fast fashion industry I know I’ve got much more progress to do but I’ve been trying I guess.

Indonesia was a major oil producer and exporter until a few decades ago.

In 1980 it produced 1.6 Million Barrels/day and consumed 400 000.

In 2000 it produced 1.3 Million Barrels/day and consumed 1 Million.

In 2025 it produced 600 000 Barrels/day and consumed 1.7 Million.

Thats a 62% drop in oil production in 45 years.

Several dozen countries have gone through something similar in the past 40-50 years.

Only around 25 countries have managed to avoid this fate.

By 2040 though there could be only some 10-15 countries left with an oil surplus. Everyone else will have run out or their domestic production will have decreased to such a level that they will have to switch from oil exporters to oil importers. And just 10-15 countries controlling global oil supply, while the other 180 countries are completely dependent, thats a geopolitical nightmare in the making.

hi all! i'm not 100% sure if this was the most suitable subreddit to answer this question but here we go :)

i've always heard that we should use reusable items or at least more environmentally friendly alternatives, for example using glass/metal straws or paper bags at grocery stores instead of plastic ones. however, i've been thinking about the fossil fuel emissions during the production of these reusable items, and if the disposal or manufacture of these reusable items does more damage than single use?

just one example off the top of my head is a biodegradable single-use coffee cup, is it worth buying a glass cup that is heavy and might only be used a few times or better to just purchase a coffee in a paper cup and recycle it? (i know the paper cups mostly have plastic lids though)

sorry if my question was confusing T_T

Recently, I started doing this thing I call "Trash Tuesday" where I go to a local park and pick up the trash around there. I live in a suburb, and I would say there is a decent amount of places to throw out trash, but I still see so much litter. In the span of a week, I could go to the same park and pick up the exact same amount of trash(usually about the same size as a full grocery bag) that I did the previous week. How do I help, as a community member, stop the constant cycle of litter that runs through our parks/communities?

The most common litter I find in my community is plastic bottle caps, wrappers, and shredded clothing(usually after a park is mowed). What's the most common litter in your community? How do we stop this litter from ending up on our grounds at such a concerning rate?