[Rant] A disposable world
The other day I saw what was either the shittiest stickerbomb ever, or a new level of laziness.
There's more to read below, I promise.
And more stickers too, of course...
You can win absolutely nothing if you guess which bin is closest to the shop door.
The fourth victim of this senseless stickerbombing.
I saw these wonderful sights when I recently popped to the shops. These stickers come attached to the bottom of disposable vapes to keep all that nic juice in. I'm surprised this has only started recently as the shop in question has sold disposables for a while now and I've never seen the bins in this much of a state (or in a state at all).
A reverse image search on any of these images reveals that I'm not the only one.
I have three theories as to why this has suddenly started near me:
- Someone was too lazy to put their sticker in once, and this made others feel it was okay to do instead of trying to dispose of it properly, by, I don't know, sticking it to all the packaging it comes with and throwing it in the bin?
- Someone did it once, and other people thought it was cool to stickerbomb the bin with vape stickers.
- A new brand of vapes are being sold there which caused this to start happening.
My suspicion is that it's a mix of 1 and 2, mostly the aspect that once someone does it, it's socially acceptable for others to do. I feel like it provides social proof to others that this is okay behaviour. I'm kind of glad it took this long for it to happen here seeing how other cities have been fairing the same, some as early as a year ago. However, when I saw it, it still made me immensely disappointed. At first I thought it was a bunch of bird crap but nope, it's us humans doing it (of course).
I can't believe we've gotten to this point. We've made it as convenient as possible to use (and very wasteful, relegating some rechargeable lithium cell, a bunch of plastic and some metal to landfill forever more) and still people manage to find a way to ruin it. If you're going to buy this disposable crap at least have the common decency to dispose of it properly.
Not to mention I know non-smokers who will after a few drinks go and buy a disposable vape to hit that they otherwise wouldn't do if the only option was a pack of cigarettes, so it's not exactly winning in that arena. I imagine it does help some smokers but I really do wonder what the impact is versus the benefit. I suppose only time will tell.
At least it looks like we're finally doing something about it.