[bhahn]

I don’t think this is virtue signaling at all. Virtue signaling implies, to me at least, a person that is trying to make himself/herself look better to others. In almost all cases that I see in Los Angeles and other large US cities, people just recycle because it’s in front of them (eg. city provides a recycling bin to all houses), and have no other specific intentions.

I do agree though that recycling does help feed the *vicious cycle of consumption by hiding or misrepresenting the negative externalities.

(Edited to fix virtuous typo. Meant vicious)

[buran77]

> people just recycle because it’s in front of them

People skip the reduce&reuse and go straight to recycle because it allows them to signal that virtue without actually doing all that much after all. It is still better than nothing but it's more signal than virtue. It's quite possibly the least anyone can do in terms of effort, throw the copious amounts of trash in 2-3 bins instead of one.

It's the same with EVs. Where the focus should be to reduce the use of cars (with many, many benefits that come as side effects), we actually encourage people to drive more by moving the costs upfront in the purchase price and making driving even cheaper. This means people will have to get their money's worth by driving more. It also allows people to have a massive carbon footprint while still virtue signaling via the fact that they drive an EV, or recycle the battery.

I don't have to look any further than my closest neighbor who buys a new SUV every 2 years, the latest being a Model X. Just a couple of months ago in casual conversation he pointed out the fact that I own a (admittedly old, decade+) gasoline car, even if with a tiny engine. It would be much cleaner to buy an EV he says. No consideration to the fact that recently I drive my car under 2000Km per year and ride a bicycle or public transport as much as I reasonably can.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I have seen multiple occurrences of someone in a home (a guest in mine, for one) or office generate some garbage and ask where the recycling is, and when the response (e.g. in my house) is "oh, we just recycle cans" or "sorry, we don't have a recycling bin", the response has been somewhere between "Are you planning on serving baby seal for lunch?" and "Are you skipping lunch and going straight to the Klan rally?"

I used to get into an argument about how recycling really only makes much sense when it's energetically cheaper (e.g. aluminum), but I was usually just wasting my breath so now my normal response is that baby seal is just the appetizer.

[lukifer]

> Virtue signaling implies, to me at least, a person that is trying to make himself/herself look better to others.

Is there a term for virtue signaling to one's self?

[sukilot]

Vicious cycle of consumption.