Reply to Agree or Disagree?: Inflatable yard Christmas decor is tacky

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]They don't make me happy. They remind me of all the junk people buy at the holidays and how much of it winds up in landfills and also how much oil and fuel gets used up shipping it to people's homes so they can do this stuff. I get some people use them year after year, but some people don't, and also it becomes another thing that people compete over so what starts as one house with a few tacky inflatables because entire neighborhoods full of them. Yes it is bad for the environment.

Also, there are lots of ways to make kids smile. You can hug them! Bake some cookies! Say you love them! You really do not have to buy a generator and a $100 piece of tacky plastic on Amazon to make your child smile during the holiday season.

Sorry to be a killjoy. I love holidays and celebrating with family and friends and enjoying food and I even like plenty of decorations, just not the plastic crap ones, and the yard inflatables are sort of the poster child for "plastic Christmas crap." I'm not a grinch but I can't get behind these.[/quote]

Coming from a person who probably has a too big of a house and hires out lawn care...[/quote]

Wrong on both counts. I live in a condo, don't have a lawn at all. I don't even own a car. I love how the responses to my post have all been "whatever, you're probably a hypocrite." But I'm actually not.

I bet a lot of you talking about how much you love the inflatable lawn ornaments also lecture people about recycling and claim to be environmentalists. But you'll hide behind "but the kids like it!" when you want to buy all your plastic crap from Amazon. Guess what, kids don't understand the implications of filling our lives with a metric ton of plastic waste that must be shipped using fossil fuels to arrive on your doorstep -- it's your job to know that.

The "it's for the kids" argument is particularly galling when you realize that the accumulation of all this plastic crap, delivered via the burning of yet more fossil fuels, is precisely what is destroying this planet "for the kids."

Anyway, I don't care if I'm a killjoy. You people need to hear this.[/quote]

You are being righteous but neither you nor any of us have a good idea of the environmental footprint of most of our decisions. We try to do our best and balance concerns for the environment with other needs.

P.S. Out inflatable is recyclable and is a whole lot more environmentally friendly than often taunted environmental solutions like owning crypto, an electric vehicle etc[/quote]

Lol literally no one has suggested you replace your inflatable yard ornament with "owning crypto" or buying an electronic vehicle, weirdo. Also, I am explaining the environmental impact of your decision to you right now and you are like "no one can know!" Yes, we can know. You choose to ignore it, which is different.

One reason this one annoys me is that it's unnecessary. There are environmentally conscious ways to decorate for the holidays. You can decorate with nature (wreaths, collected pinecones, poinsettias, etc), with found objects like vintage sleds or ice skates, with crafts made from recycled and recyclable paper (much more likely to actually get recycled than your PVC lawn ornament and the accompanying air pump), and so on. It's different than yelling at someone for driving a car -- some people need cars to go to work because they don't have access to public transportation, and electric vehicles are prohibitively expensive for most people. But we're talking about holiday decorations. You 100% have a choice between a very environmentally unfriendly option (plastic, manufactured and shipped from oversees, consuming energy the entire time its in use, likely to wind up in a landfill) or an environmentally conscious one. And you are choosing the unfriendly option and justifying it with "kids like them" even though I expect a lot of those kids will like these a lot less when they grow up and realize what their parents did to the planet with their mindless consumption of cheap plastic goods.

Also, this thread is full of people who are like "I was unsure about these until I saw my neighbor had 4 of them, so I bought 8!" or "we only had a couple but then my neighbor called them tacky, so I bought 10 more just to spite her!" It's part of this competitive, spiteful, "these are fun and anyone who doesn't think so SUCKS" attitude which is actually incredibly consumerist and makes what could be a small problem into a big problem. If people in this thread were saying "Yeah, we like the one we have and we found a solar powered pump, here's a link" I might not have such a horrified response. But the attitude on this thread is "Yes, more more more let's fill the neighborhood with inflatables specifically to annoy people!" It's no exactly "holiday spirit" and seems to be more about being loud and ugly to one another than celebrating or making kids smile.[/quote]

You have no reading comprehension skills.

1. Many things that are touted as environmentally friendly are not. It takes decades sometimes to understand the true impact. The electric vehicle is a classic EXAMPLE of righteous a**holes touting something whose impact they don’t know. 
2. You have no idea of other people’s environmental footprint, nor do we of yours. So go get a drink and sit down. [/quote]

I'm sorry, is your argument actually that we simply cannot know the environmental impacts of plastic lawn inflatables for "decades" so it's not okay to criticize them for environmental reasons? Really?

Also, are you actually saying that you think one day we'll learn that decorating with natural wreaths and pinecones and found objects is weirdly worse for the environment than ordering a bunch of plastic crap from Amazon and leaving it powered up for hours a day for a couple months?

And then you are arguing that since we can't know one another's environmental impact, I'm not allowed to criticize a behavior that is obviously more environmentally harmful than simply not engaging in that behavior. If that were the case then no one could ever criticize the environmental impact of anything. I mean, Amazon seems like a terrible company for the environment but I guess since I haven't sat down and worked out Jeff Bezos' exact carbon footprint, I'm not allowed to criticize. Huh.

This thread is not actually about electric vehicles, and I don't have an electric vehicle nor do I encourage other people to get them, so that's beside the point.

You know you have no leg to stand on so instead you are telling me to "get a drink and sit down." But you can't put together a single cogent argument defending these things from an environmental standpoint. Your arguments are weak and you know it so instead you are attacking me personally. You'll be annoyed about me today but the next time you go to order more plastic holiday garbage online, you'll also think about this conversation and you'll either have to ignore what you know is true about your behavior, or you'll stop. Either way, I view it as a victory.

Happy Holidays![/quote]

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