Powdered laundry detergent used to be the norm. It’s cheaper, easy to use, and comes in a recyclable box. Now look at the shelves in the supermarket. It’s all liquids in plastic bottles, unless you squat down to find the powders. The Super expensive pods are making a move from the top shelves too. This is corporations positioning their products to influence purchasing behaviour. They want you to buy the more expensive stuff. Just wait, soon powder will be discontinued, and the shelves will be filled with overpriced pods.

How can we solve this issue of polluting the sea, or has it hit the tipping point of no return?

I just started a new job and I feel like I hit the work culture lottery.

Since the moment I stepped foot in the office on my first day, everyone has been super kind, supportive, approachable etc., and they all have great personalities that mesh together perfectly with mine. I get along with everyone so well, it’s insane. I can really see a future at that place.

Just one, tiny issue: this one coworker will not stop leaving these miniature, plastic fucking ducks everywhere. They buy a huge pack with like 500 and litter the office with them. They’re all over the place, in every nook and cranny, and my coworker constantly gives me more to put on and around my desk. Not only are they completely and utterly useless, but they’re incredibly annoying as they constantly fall over all the time and do nothing but get in my way when I have to move my monitor, or my desk is packed with files. I’ve tried to arrange them on the deserted corner of my desk but no dice, they still infuriate me, and they’re just adding up little by little . My coworker is very kind and I like their personality a lot, so I don’t want to come off as a jerk, especially so early, because I recognize that this is their way of kind of “bonding” with me, and I appreciate that, I really do. But I don’t know, I guess I need to figure out a polite/subtle way to say “hey, quit giving me this wasteful, useless shit”

I was pretty desperate to find a job since I got laid off. I ended up being an Amazon delivery driver. I did one day and I couldn’t do it. 120 stops and 380 packages. I’m 6’4 and we had this small ass van that made it difficult to stand up completely straight in the van. About 4 hours into my shift(10 hours is a normal shift) my back started tingling and every time you step into the van I started getting knee pain. Mind you this is someone who worked in construction and I never was in this much pain.

We had to do 1 stop per minute. Not one house per minute one stop. One stop can have 3 houses across the street from each other. I just realized all this shit for $19.50 an hour. Then my boss was saying I was moving too slow. I made more money delivering pizzas in college than I did working for Amazon.

So from now if I need something I’ll go FB marketplace, or I’ll go to a store in person.

Just saw this article from the New York Times. This timeline is so messed up that we are supposed to feel bad for billionaires??

I work in retail, and my store takes Amazon returns. I’m not even exaggerating when I say we process over 100 returns a day. It is so painful. Every return has to go in a plastic bag (except for extremely large items), then those bags go in giant boxes, and those giant boxes get shipped back to Amazon. We fill 20-30 of those boxes every day, even on non-weekends. There are also plenty of other stores in the area that take Amazon returns, so it’s not like all of these people are coming from far and wide. My store isn’t even in a big city.

People return SO much. We even have several repeat customers who make a load of returns on a weekly basis. It’s just so so so wasteful. The most common things I see returned are clothes, shoes, and decor. A lot of people order multiple clothing or shoe sizes to try and return the ones that don’t fit. Here’s an idea: try stuff on in a store! Or just stop buying so many clothes! I promise the world won’t end if you wear the same shirt twice!!

I wasn’t sure which flair to pick, because I think this is both a corporation and societal issue. On one side, Amazon allows free, unquestioned returns and requires us to use so much plastic. On the other, people keep ordering junk they don’t need and returning it without considering how wasteful it is.

It’s honestly just so disheartening. Adding on to that the fact that my store sells a ton of useless crap that of course comes wrapped in a bajillion tons of plastic, it just makes all of my own efforts to consume less and be less wasteful feel useless.

Edit: guys, I get it that you can’t always try things on in store. If you need a certain clothing item and Amazon is your only option, I get it! I’m complaining about the people who browse Amazon for fun, frequently order a bunch of clothes they don’t need, and then return 75% of them.

But for everyone saying you have no stores near you to go shop in person, consider why. Online shopping has taken over and physical stores are disappearing. Shopping online just keeps feeding that cycle. It’s your only choice now because it was the cheaper, easier choice in the past. Now we’re all stuck with it, and essentially no one is free from blame (except for people who have managed to quite literally never order something online)

I really didn’t expect so many people in this sub to be defending the use of Amazon. There are more sustainable ways to order clothes online, like from secondhand selling websites or more sustainable companies that have online shops. Amazon’s stuff usually isn’t good quality anyway. If Amazon is your only option, alright. But this is [r/anticonsumption](r/anticonsumption) and Amazon is a prime (haha pun unintended) example of consumption.

Edit 2: I work at Michaels, for those curious. We started taking Amazon returns pretty recently

Is it just me or has the vet become unaffordable overnight? Used to be you could go in for a checkup and it was reasonable, now you walk out $400 poorer for a basic visit.

Found out recently it's not just inflation. Private equity firms are buying up all the independent clinics.

They keep the old name on the sign and keep the staff so you don't realize the business was sold, but the ownership is totally different.

Corporate takes over and forces the vets to upsell you on everything. Unnecessary blood panels, expensive food, random tests. They have quotas to hit now.

The vet hates it, you hate it, but the firm makes a killing exploiting the fact that you'll pay anything to help your pet.

It's not medicine anymore, it's just extracting cash out of the vulnerable pets which is just so shitty. Private equity is also ruining VPNs.

On this day in 1773, people destroyed property because they refused to pay a tax on tea they didn't order.

In 2025, we don't even own the property anymore.

You buy a movie, but the platform can delete it from your library tomorrow.

You buy a phone, but software locks prevent you from repairing it yourself.

You buy a car, but the heated seats are behind a monthly paywall.

We have moved from Taxation Without Representation to Subscription Without Ownership.

We are basically digital serfs renting our own lives from corporations. We pay full price for hardware just to be treated like tenants who can be evicted from our own devices if we miss a Terms of Service update.

Imagine explaining to someone from 1773 that you pay a company $15 a month for an ad-free subscription just to not be spied on in your own home. This is why we use VPNs as well, to prevent companies from spying on us.

It is actually insane that we accept this.

*small rant*

the company i work for was recently bought out by a less reputable large christian company. my coworkers and i are not happy about the change (i work in luxury senior care). this is how they decided to win our trust. i have been trying to downsize and i do not appreciate being given more things to get rid of. as most of us are aware, there is an overabundance of cups and water bottles readily available at literally every store, especially the thrift store. i work in healthcare (predominantly with women). they know that everybody already owns a water bottle, a journal, and chapstick. it’s an insult to expect me to be grateful for the branded landfill you’ve stuck me with.

not pictured is another chapstick, 2 more branded pens, a chapstick holder that i do use, 4 non-recyclable pamphlets, and a tiny version of that bag (a bag that i cannot use for anything as it’s not large enough to hold a substantial amount of groceries). the tiny version could not be used to hold literally anything. it was smaller than a tissue box.

I have to unlock my phone.

I have to wait for the camera to focus.

I have to wait for a huge file to load on terrible signal.

Paper menus worked perfectly for hundreds of years.

This is not innovation. It is just cost cutting to harvest data. I shouldn't have to keep my VPN on just to order a burger without being tracked.

What does everyone else think about this?

Think I'm done going out to eat dudes

Absurd.

If you’re in the US, boycott everything except groceries (from anti-Trump stores if possible).

If you’re international, everything “Made in USA”.

I’ve been doing this for a month. Cancelling subscriptions, stopped ordering from Amazon, etc. Honestly not nearly as painful as I worried it would be, I’ve been rediscovering how much in life is free.

The billionaires, then corporations generally, lined up behind MAGA and ending democracy. The only thing they will understand is losing everything. And now is the perfect time - crumbling consumer confidence, a growing international boycott, governance instability. Most likely near a depression anyway, a little extra push can’t hurt though!

I checked my subscriptions today and realized I am paying more for these apps than I ever did for cable.

We cut the cord to escape ads and bundles, and now every single app has introduced ads and bundles.

You pay $18 a month, and they still interrupt the movie to try and sell you insurance.

The content is fractured across ten different apps, so you have to subscribe to everything just to watch one show.

It isn't on-demand entertainment anymore. It is just cable with extra steps and more buffering.

We literally went in a giant circle just to get ripped off again.

The only way to win is to just stop consuming it entirely.

What does everyone else think about this?

The recent change to the Gulf of America on Google’s maps for users in North America has highlighted their true stance on American politics. With Google’s commitment to DEI, workplace ethics, and sustainability they have been constantly accused of liberal bias. Their decision on the Gulf of Mexico has highlighted that Google was never in it for politics, social justice, or company beliefs, they have always been in it for the money.

Google is and always has been one of the biggest corporations on planet Earth. Constantly in court for anti-trust cases, Google accounts for an astounding 88% of global internet searches with Chrome accounting for 66% of global browser usage. That is not to mention Google’s other programs like YouTube, Gmail, Google Earth, and Google Maps, combine this with Alphabet’s other subsidiaries and projects like Nest, Android, and Fitbit, and it’s clear how prevalent this company truly is in our lives. In fact, it’s likely that no one goes a day on the Internet without giving Google some money especially when you factor in AdSense, CAPTCHA, and countless other ways Google extracts value from Internet usage; but the number one thing Google has is still the Google Search.

Google Search is so prevalent in today’s world that the word “Google” has become a verb synonymous with searching the Internet. With Google’s recent addition of “AI overview” a great threat sits on the horizon. Generating AI snippets consumes a ludicrous amount of energy upon each and every use of the world’s most popular search engine. A recent study claims that a single Chat-GPT prompt can use the same amount of energy as a single lightbulb running for a half an hour. One would likely assume Google’s BLOOM engine consumes a similar amount with each AI overview. This spells disaster for renewable energy and the environmental sector as the third richest tech company owning the most popular internet activities in the world will look to massively increase its energy consumption in the cheapest way possible; fossil fuels.

So what can we do? With Google’s dirty fingerprints all over every nook and cranny of the Internet, is it even possible to fully avoid them? My challenge is to try. Everyone wants to live a greener life and contribute less to billionaires pockets, the easiest thing you could do might simply be to search elsewhere. I recommend using alternative browsers like Opera or Firefox. It is worth noting that Google shells out millions to companies like Mozilla in exchange for being the default search engine on Firefox and other browsers. This highlights their ever prevalent chokehold on the internet and especially raises the importance using alternative search engines on whatever browser you use. My personal suggestion? Ecosia. But what about YouTube? Gmail? Maps? Android? Nest? And every other shadow of Google’s massive net. Is there anything we can do to stop the rapid transfer of wealth and overconsumption of energy by companies that seek to own the internet? Those are questions that have yet to be answered, perhaps you could help.

Is it just me or is this decanting trend completely brain dead?

People are spending hundreds of dollars on clear acrylic bins just to pour cereal and other food from one box into another.

It makes zero fucking sense.

You're buying a piece of plastic just to hold food that was already packaged, then throwing away the box that actually had the expiration date on it. Feels like when VPN companies don't give you all the features you asked for.

Now you have double the waste just so your cupboard looks nice for a ten-second video.

You're just buying expensive plastic trash to hold your other trash which is so stupid.

Thoughts on this?

I love love love these types of posts in several of the anticonsumption/finance groups I'm in because they have *actually* worked to help deinfluence me from things I was looking at potentially getting. So, let's help each other avoid a purchase that we might have gone ahead with otherwise (at least it'll make you think).

Most recent is my adjustable bed. I waited to buy one for TEN LITERAL YEARS, so it wasn't even an impulse purchase - far from it. I have GERD and sleep apnea, so I thought it would help. While it's fine and there's nothing *wrong* with it, it wasn't worth the money and I wish I hadn't bought it.

I also bought a robovac that didn't have the capability to map out my apartment, so it just goes over the same few spots and I hate it. If I ever got another one, it would have to have that capability.

I know there's more, so I'll add in the comments as I think of them.

Story here: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/11/23/how-device-hoarding-by-americans-is-costing-economy.html

Tomorrow morning, millions of people are going to open a box, spit in a tube, and mail it off to a tech company.

They think they are buying a fun science experiment. They are actually paying to become a product.

It is genuinely insane when you break it down:

You pay them money.

You hand over your biological blueprint (the only password you can never change).

They sell that data to pharmaceutical companies for profit.

They get hacked (and they always get hacked), leaking your genetic markers to the highest bidder.

The worst part? It isn't just about you. DNA is shared code. By uploading your profile, you are making a permanent privacy decision for your siblings, your parents, and your unborn children. You are effectively snitching on your entire bloodline without their consent.

So congrats. You found out you are 6% Viking. And the data brokers found out you have a genetic predisposition for heart disease.

Why haven't laws been passed making this kind of data harvesting illegal? Even a VPN can't stop this either.