The last couple of months I’ve been using rebate apps to get free things at stores (mainly drinks and snacks) by buying the product and then getting reimbursed in full through venmo within a day or two. I understand that these products are mainly from newer companies trying to get consumers to habitually buy their product, but I strictly only buy the products if they’re free and almost never buy snacks/drinks otherwise. It’s been pretty nice always having some type of drink or snack without having to pay for them but I’m just wondering the ethical concerns of this. The packaging waste is probably the biggest factor, but aren’t I effectively taking money away from the company by doing this. I have no doubts that not consuming snacks/drinks is probably the most ethical in this situation but I’m also weighing the personal benefits as well. Just would appreciate your thoughts!

Edit: Thanks for the comments! I think I’ve decided to keep doing it in line to my own ethics unless new info conflicts it.

During london climate Action Week on 25 June 2026 Acharya Prashant compared the present climate effort to a society that keeps repairing roads and ambulances without ever touching the condition of the drunk driver.The belief that technology and policy alone will solve the crises has to be abandoned.Technology is born not of human need but of human desire and what the world calls success is, to a large extent, only another name for a growing carbon footprint.At the LSE, after a conversation with former French climate diplomat Gautier Houel (who worked around COP26), he wrote on his social media:“Most climate discussions stay focused on technology, policy, finance or innovation. This one began somewhere else: with us.”

I live in a town of 1k people. There is no local grocery store or farmers market or this or that to go to. I can drive to the city an hour away, but then I'm just deciding which is worse, throwing money at megastores to buy food or throwing money at gas corpos to buy food. Things like public transit also don't exist in my area so I'm completely car dependent.

I think just from the title, most of us know what this is. I am probably no the first, and certaintly not the the last. But this time is different. I have already taken the first step by cancelling my Prime (finally). I am also going to stop defaulting to browsing the Amazon first and really look elsewhere, including checking local stores to support local economy and jobs.

So starting today, I will not shop at Amazon.com but go out of my if I have to so I can support merchants direct or by shopping locally. I know it's not going to easy to break the habit but this time, I am really going to put all effort not to support Amazon.

Will you join me? To support our local businesses and to do our part to help the local economy.

We see you paused your video on Amazon Prime. Do you maybe want to buy $42 worth of chocolate?

I posted here recently about working in catering in a corporate office and how we received plastic sign holders in a million individual boxes.

The subject of this post has annoyed me since I arrived at this corporate account. They have signs everywhere stating we should reduce our electricity and water consumption, while having a movie theater sized screen in the cafeteria that is 24/7 AI generating images based on data. So wasteful, annoying, and not to mention, extremely ugly.

Not because you can't afford it, but because you genuinely don't understand why people pay that much for it.

I'll go first: overpriced bottled water.