A lot of time, the money is channeled to running the organization and the beneficiaries get a small percentage of the total donated. I'm thinking something like 10%-30%.
But of course I don't discourage people from doing charity work. I mean 10%-30% is better than 0%.
Although on a flip side, my other brain tells me, the more that people donate, the more they incentivize bad behavior. By continuously donating, the people feed the large pays of the CEOs and the cycle continues. I'm a believer of, the people have the power to choose, and they should choose correct organizations to pump their resources into.
So I'm very picky over helping charities or supporting activities and I don't like pouring resources down a drain. Resources could be money or time. So if the organization or activity isn't sustainable or doesn't do very much in terms of real values, or is too idealistic, I don't care about it.
So recently, I've started kinda supporting the Pasir Panjang vegetable hunts. See post on that here.
Simply cos, it's simple and pretty sustainable. And a lot of the resources go to the beneficiaries.
The freegans volunteer and get paid in terms of free fruits and vegetables, there is less wastage of food, a whole truckload of around 1.2-1.5 tonnes of food gets transported to organizations which provide free food for the less fortunate. And there is some reimbursement of around $20-$30 for the fuel costs. So essentially, the organization gets 1.5 tonnes of food for around $20. Which is really great. The volunteers get "paid" but not a lot, but sufficient to keep them happy and for them to return to help again.
So to me, this is sustainable, the beneficiaries get a lot of the donated resources and the people helping out get a small token of appreciation.
An organization like Willing Hearts provide something like 5000 daily meals for their beneficiaries.
http://www.willinghearts.org.sg/what-willing-hearts-does/
So I know where my efforts are going towards.
The freegan group tends to attract people who are environmentally conscious. That's the point of freegan-ism, they tend to reuse other peoples' products so it reduces consumption and in turn is somewhat good for the environment.
There are passionate individuals who take it upon themselves (and their group) to stand outside supermarkets to educate customers on bringing their own reusable carrying bags and try to get people to agree to use less plastic bags and switch to canvas bags instead.
Now, these are the activities which I find idealistic and not sustainable. By all means, if they want to do it, go ahead, but personally, I'd rather put my efforts to somewhere else.
There are folks who are environmentally conscious and some people will be convinced to switch to reusable bags. Many others will just continue with their daily lives. Or they may try it out once or twice then continue with their daily lives.
So maybe their conversion rate could be 1-2 people per day. I think even that number is idealistic. But to me, I look around and I see that this is just a drop in the ocean. How much plastics do we use? Toys, Lego, my rubbish bin, water bottles, TV, printers, etc etc... there are 7 billion people in this world. To change the minds of a few people to stop using plastic bags is just a small number and that's only for plastic bags. What about all the other plastic consumables that they use?
For me, I would prefer to spend my efforts on more realistic causes which will be able to impact lives.
But everyone has their own pet project so... to each their own.
Today, someone in the community requested for help to collect tabs for drink cans. This is just the ring tab of drink cans. The cause that this person is supporting is irrelevant. Cos there are many organizations which request for drink can tabs.
In truth, the whole drink can is valuable aluminum smelted from the same kind of material. But many organizations request for just the ring tabs. Basically, cos it is slightly more valuable cos it requires less processing to clean up the drink and remove the ink to recycle back into aluminum.
Organizations request the ring tabs cos this helps incentivize people to donate the ring tabs. It's easy to call people to remove the rings to bring it home and stock it up and donate it when the time comes. Imagine if the organizations call people to store the WHOLE drink can instead... How many people would be willing to store the whole drink can to send to organizations for recycling? So this is also pretty much a marketing thing, to get people interested in the first place.
But do you know the value of donating ring tabs?
One pound in weight equals approximately 1,000 tabs...
OR one kilogram equals approximately 2,205 tabs...
BUT
1 pound is also around 31 empty cans.
1 kg is around 68 cans...
Which would take less time to collect? But which would people prefer to help to collect?
I did some simple searches for prices for scrap metal. Cos that's what these are... They are just scrap metal to be melted back into aluminum and reused for whatever purpose.
The price is around US$1 (S$1.32 today) per pound.
So let me overestimate S$5 per KG.
That's S$5 for 2,205 drink can tabs... This is S$0.0022676 PER tab... not even 1 cent each.
This is when I scratch my head and think... what the hell???
And I go back to the start of this topic... someone in the freegan chat asked the other freegans to help to collect drink can tabs... Is the effort even worth it? Any form of transport to deliver the tabs would render the value to nil, unless the amount transported is very large.
In essence, I think this is pretty much a feel good initiative. Or maybe to raise awareness... maybe to encourage kids to collect drink can tabs so that they will learn about recycling and when they exchange the tabs for money, they get a kick out of it. Truthfully, that's what it is... a feel good type of activity.
But once again, everyone is a free man, they can do whatever they want. And people would probably criticize me for being negative and not encouraging...
But to me, energy and resources are finite. So time and effort need to be put into initiative that are worth doing. It's not about just doing something just cos someone said to do it. Like financial planning, everything needs to be well thought out else, a plan with holes isn't very much of a plan at all. Someone who saves a lot but spends freely with his credit card and gets into debt isn't doing very well financially. There's no point doing some good things and doing other things which are just wasting all the good effects.
I'm sure many of you have heard about Earth Hour... how wonderful, people switch off power for 1 hour simultaneously, how nice, everyone gets a warm fuzzy feeling of togetherness...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/maggie-koerthbaker/earth-hour_b_1390247.html
I'll cut out some key parts... emphasis my own...
I have three big problems with Earth Hour and the message it sends. First, some people are going to be very easily disillusioned when they find out that Earth Hour doesn’t actually do anything — on its own — to combat climate change. In fact, in places where lots of people participate, there might even be a small, temporary uptick in emissions. When fossil fuel power plants are forced to rapidly increase or decrease the amount of electricity they produce, they also produce more emissions, just as your car burns more gasoline if you’re rapidly accelerating and decelerating than if you maintain a constant speed.
So, when everybody turns the lights back on at the end of Earth Hour, it means that some coal and natural gas power plants will have to quickly work extra hard to meet that sudden increase in demand. In order to do that, they produce more emissions than they otherwise would have. Now, just as turning your lights off for an hour won’t save the planet, this short-term increase in the emissions output of a few power plants won’t seal our fate, either. Yet there is a real risk that discovering this fact will convince some people to mistrust any effort to get them to change their energy-use behavior...
Another point from the same article... it's not about living in the dark cold stone ages that we are talking about... so why off the lights? This may make people think that to counteract climate change, we need to suffer and be deprived of the luxuries of electricity... certainly makes people less interested in it...
We don’t have to go back in time to counteract climate change and prepare for peak oil, but an energy event that encourages people to spend an hour in the dark certainly gives that impression.
Or maybe people would think it's too easy... Just turn off the lights... and climate change will reverse it's course?
Finally, although Earth Hour can make energy change seem too hard, it can simultaneously also make it seem too easy. Some people see Earth Hour and think that they’re being asked to abandon everything that makes their lives nice. Other people see it and come away thinking that all they have to do is shut off some lights sometimes, and everything will be fixed. It’s easy to throw a party once a year and hang out with your friends in the dark, but real change is difficult, and it doesn’t really happen at home.
I wonder... do people really think it is more energy efficient to light a candle instead of turning on the LED lights at home?
Gram for gram for the amount of light provided... fuel burnt in a power generator is much more efficient than lighting a candle...
A candle has less complete burning releases more harmful chemicals into the atmosphere, it produces heat unnecessarily... that's the same reason why LED lights are more efficient than incandescent lights. Cos LED lights produce less heat, so there's less wastage of electricity. Cos energy is wasted producing unnecessary heat in an incandescent light bulb, when all people really want is just light.
So maybe Earth Hour is really just about the feel good factor... just to raise awareness... but without real active change... that's all that it really is... just a warm fuzzy feeling in peoples' hearts, thinking that they did their part....
Anyway... I'm just an individual and I think anyone can do what they want. If they want a warm fuzzy feeling, then so be it... to me... I prefer to put my efforts into things which I feel are worth my effort... I have no false hopes that there will be less wastage due to my efforts at Pasir Panjang... in our current economic system, demand and supply, there will definitely be wastage. It is just how the business model works.
For me, I'm just putting in the effort to gather the excess and passing them on to the less fortunate. This also doesn't mean that they will be any more fortunate... but at least they will not be hungry for the day. And that is good enough for me, for the amount of effort, reward, resources put in, for the benefits that it passes on, I believe that this is worth my effort if my time permits.
As for other people and causes... I wonder... do they really think about what they are contributing to? Do they know how much resources get channeled to the beneficiaries? Are they doing more harm than good? Is it all just a cause for feeling good but the effect isn't there?
Now I'm not judging... I'm sure there are plenty of good causes. And any cause is a fair enough cause, different people want to help different causes. I also am fully aware that charitable organizations are run by normal people who need to eat and sustain a family just like everyone else. Although I question the remuneration of the top brass in such organizations. I would just like to put across the idea for people to think more about what they do and why they do it, and the value of what they do. Instead of just doing it cos it's easy, or cos it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside.
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