Wasteful things I HATE about living in California

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]I have moved eight times in my adult life, which is just about nine years.

[00:00:03]And every time that I have moved, I have made videos like these, wasteful things that I hate about this place. But then also some good things that I like about this place. And it all started when I lived in Japan, and I'm just like, "Oh my gosh, the plastic here is insane."

[00:00:18]And then I moved to Vegas, and then I moved to Ohio, and quite frankly, I forgot to do one for Minnesota, I think.

[00:00:23]But I think I did one for Washington, too. And now I live in Northern California. So, let's talk about the wasteful things that I hate about California. Hello everyone, it's Emma, and welcome back to my channel where I talk about all sorts of things, zero waste, focusing on free, easy, and fun ways to live low waste, and ways that we can all be activists. If I talk a little bit too fast for you, there's a gear icon over here, where you can change the speed of the video to something that better suits you. I'm not sure if anybody will get mad at videos like this. Just know that I don't actually hate any of these places. These are the wasteful things that I hate about XYZ place. I loved living in Japan. I loved living in the desert. I didn't love Las Vegas. I love Washington. Ohio's okay. I love Minnesota.

[00:01:02]And there are perks to these places as well. There many of these places also have very eco things that they do, too.

[00:01:07]I love living in California, especially this little town here. I I love living here. But we do have to acknowledge the areas in which our communities can grow.

[00:01:15]So, that's what this is about. Let's get into it. So, the first being that specifically where we are in true Northern California is we are so rural.

[00:01:24]Our next closest city is about 3 hours, and even then, that's not our closest airport. Well, I mean, we have a small regional airport here, but like our closest major city, 5 hours away.

[00:01:35]Thankfully, we do have everything that we need here. Like we have a grocery store, we have a small regional airport, we have a hospital, and things like that. But like that's all just very general. If you need specialty medical care, you can't get it here. You do have to drive down to San Francisco, which is not truly Northern California, by the way, to get your specialty medical care.

[00:01:52]So, simply put, that just means we do a lot of driving, even to the grocery store. And then if we have to go anywhere beyond the grocery store, we especially have to drive. I could certainly, I guess, sail to San Francisco or bike to San Francisco, um but I don't. I drive because that is the most convenient. So, hate me if you want, but when I need to go to San Francisco or Eugene or Portland or Redding, I'm taking my car. But also that often means lots of flying, too.

[00:02:17]And I think this is just not acknowledged very much in eco spaces is how convenient flying is at the same time demonizing people who fly. And I'm not saying that we should fly frivolously, and we should celebrate people who fly frivolously, but I'm saying that if somebody's taking, you know, an emergency trip to see an ailing family member or attend a funeral or attend a wedding, even, you know, a happy celebration, living in the in the United States where paid time off is not guaranteed, right? Like I know plenty people who only get a week of paid time off per year. If I wanted to go to a wedding for my family in Ohio, but I'm living in California, it would take me a week to drive there. If I only had a week of paid time off, I can't go by car. I don't have enough time to do that. And like how much of a privilege it can be to drive, especially when you live so far from your family, for example. Yeah, unfortunately, we do fly out of convenience because, quite frankly, I I can't drive to Ohio once or twice a year. And I really don't We don't travel that often via plane. But when we do, I've learned to not feel bad about it, especially because of where we live. But then also because of where we live, it costs so much money to fly. It incentivizes me to not fly. That was a lot of ranting to say we live in this little tiny bubble in the middle of nowhere, and it takes so far to get to anywhere else, so we drive a lot. This one's actually a bit of a pro and a con.

[00:03:37]California actually mandated curbside composting several years ago. I remember seeing that news when I lived in Nevada.

[00:03:42]So, it's it's been a while. We still don't have curbside composting where we live. So, that's like the pro and con.

[00:03:46]Pro, California mandated curbside composting for everyone. Con, it takes a long, long time to establish that. I'm not saying this is a wasteful thing that I hate about California. I'm just saying that this is part of the reality of living in an eco world, and also living in such a big state. Like it surely was so easy to establish curbside composting in cities like San Francisco and LA and San Diego, where they have the infrastructure. And even if you live closer to that city, but because like we are so up here out in the middle of nowhere, it's taking us a while to get the infrastructure because there's probably a lot of debate on like, should we just build a composting facility in our region, or should we just pay to have it trucked down to San Francisco?

[00:04:25]And then also, is that, you know, outweighing then the benefits of composting, trucking it and using all that fuel to it somewhere else? Yeah, I guess that's just the downside of living in such a big state is it becomes very difficult to like legislate stuff like that because of how widespread we are.

[00:04:40]Now, an area where California could certainly improve is to eliminate single stream recycling. I'm kind of surprised that they still do that, and that's really just the norm in the entire US.

[00:04:51]So, what single stream recycling is is when you have one bin, and you put all of your stuff in one bin unsorted. Your paper, your plastic, your metal, your glass, your carton board, whatever. It all goes in the same bin, and then somebody else sorts it at the recycling facility, which is great. Gives people jobs, but I think it makes our recycling systems extremely inefficient, time-consuming, expensive. If the customers were to sort their own recycling, it would help expedite the process a lot. And at the same time, it also teaches the customer, the consumer, about recycling, and I think enforces better recycling habits. When you have single stream recycling, I think it's just a recipe for wishcycling, which you can learn more about in this video. When I lived in Japan, it was not single stream. We had to bag each single piece of recycling separately, and it pays off. Japan's recycling rates are this, and the United States' recycling rates are this. Single stream versus not single stream. Now, this is probably the most wasteful thing that I hate about California. Maybe two of them. They go hand in hand, so it's kind of one, it's kind of two. We have Silicon Valley here, which means California loves tech, California loves AI, and California loves billionaires. To include Gavin Newsom, our governor. Our governor refuses to incorporate a wealth tax, a billionaire tax, probably because he himself is a billionaire, um and he's being lobbied for by the billionaires, and he's being paid out.

[00:06:09]Gavin, Gavin, stop. Work for us. Quit working for the billionaires. Ugh.

[00:06:13]I could I could make a whole video about Gavin Newsom, but I won't because this is an eco page, and if you are also in the I hate Gavin Newsom camp, go check out this video from A Bit Fruity down below. It was a really great episode.

[00:06:27]Okay, anyway, anyway. Because there is so much tech and innovation here in California, there's just no incentive, I feel like, to regulate it when it comes to the environment. We are just using tech willy-nilly, AI willy-nilly. And sure, we can use tech and AI in some ways for the planet. That's not what we're using it for right now. We are using tech in frivolous ways for like a select few people, and the outcome is the Earth is paying for it. And then obviously, we're paying for it. And then this goes hand in hand because these billionaires are making the tech, and they want their tech to be bigger and better and make them more money, and these restrictions will make them make less money. They are then paying the politicians nationally and at our state level to not legislate and to not regulate tech. More podcast recommendations, highly recommend Taylor Lorenz on YouTube, and I think she also releases hers as a podcast, I'm not sure. She makes excellent videos about tech, big tech, regulations, AI, and all this stuff, and she could talk much more eloquently about these topics than I can. But ultimately, a lot of our tech in the United States is centered in California, and I hate that. Oh my gosh, especially like going down to San Francisco, it's like kind of spooky.

[00:07:36]Call me a What's the word when you're against tech? Call me one of those, but I'm not. I enjoy tech, but I just don't think that we should be using tech frivolously, um and killing the planet for our own enjoyment. And then yeah, because I just hate billionaires, >> [laughter] >> I think billionaires are unethical and and um unsustainable. And because a lot of them do live here, it's a wasteful thing that I hate about California. And lastly, yes, this list was very hard to come up with. It was very short, but stay tuned. Lastly is the farming that goes on in California. Not all of it, but a lot of it is very water-intensive.

[00:08:09]And actually, I learned more about this when I lived in Nevada than I do here.

[00:08:13]There's a big bird in that tree. Kind of want to go get my binoculars. What was I talking about? Farming. Because when I lived in Nevada, I lived right at, sort of, Lake Mead, which is kind of like the talking point besides Lake Powell for the Colorado River. And you're like, "What does the Colorado River have to do with California?" Everything. So, oh my gosh, I One of my special interests, I suppose, is the Colorado River. I could talk about it forever. In short, when white people first settled the desert, like, I don't know, 100 to 150 years ago, they said, "All right, you guys get this much water, you guys get this much water, you guys get this much water, etc." And that's what we're still operating off of today, even though at the time, there was probably, you know, a couple thousand people living in the desert doing like a little bit of farming. But now there are millions of people living in the desert, a lot of them being in Vegas and Phoenix and LA, and we're still operating off of the same water usage rights that were established in the late 1800s, early 1900s. Climate change was not accounted for. At the time, they were also experiencing like really extremely high rains, and they didn't know it at the time, so there was more water than historically was there.

[00:09:19]Way fewer people. And now we know a lot more about unsustainable agriculture.

[00:09:24]But yet, we're still farming unsustainably as a whole, but especially in the desert. We do a lot of water-intensive crops in Southern California, in Arizona, in Nevada.

[00:09:34]Alfalfa, cotton, almonds, avocados. I'm not saying not to grow these things. I'm saying maybe we shouldn't grow them in the desert that's in a drought. When I When I was still living in Vegas, this was like late 2022, early 2023, was a really, really good snow year. And so they put off negotiations for the Colorado River water rights another year because they're like, "Oh, we have one more year. This was a good snowpack.

[00:09:59]Let's forget about it this year." And at that time it was pushed back because California was a state to be like, "Mhm, we don't want to budge. We love having access to 50% of the Colorado River." Oh, 50% I think, give or take.

[00:10:11]And California didn't want to budge.

[00:10:12]Because of that, we are still in the mess that we are in with the Colorado River. So, California being wasteful >> [laughter] >> is impacting the entire desert Southwest and therefore the entire nation because California and the desert Southwest grow a lot of food for animals, but also a lot of human food. As I said, this list was kind of hard to come up with. This is probably one of the more eco places that I have lived and there's obviously a long way to go. Don't get me wrong, but like specifically where I live up here in my little bubble, we are super eco. I love my little hippie town. And so, I don't want to make a full video about it, but here are just a few things that my little town here does that are so eco-friendly and I just adore.

[00:10:53]Regular farmers market. We love and celebrate our local farmers here that sell us like animal products that farm animal products, but also human food. I get so much of my produce at the farmers market to include things like hot sauce, breads, other things. There are so many goods available at the farmers market and I love that that is a weekly occurrence and so many people support our local farmers. There's a huge emphasis to shopping small here which makes me so happy. I feel like so much of the United States is like, "You are hard pressed to find a small business because you're surrounded by Starbucks and McDonald's and Tim Hortons and Panera Bread and Red Lobster and all this stuff." But here it's just like, I can't even think of the closest chain restaurant to me. I can only think of local businesses and that is such a privilege and such an honor and I'm so lucky to live in a place that emphasizes small businesses, that keeps big corporations out and then we all know to go shop local and shop small. It's eco, it's better for our local economy, so many perks to shopping small which you can learn more about in this video. Even though we still don't have access to California's mandated curbside composting yet, there are still a lot of composting options here. Our school campus does composting. There's a curbside composting option that I pay for that's it's not a state mandated one. It's a local farm which I think is really cool. The farmers market has little compost buckets. You can't like drop off your compost from home, but you can compost stuff that you buy at the market which is cool and other things like that. Our local community here is also very walkable and bikeable. My direct community and then there's like a little bubble in the town south of here that has a bit of a walkable bikeable area. Again, we are quite rural. They are working on several bike paths to link like we have several cities going down the coast to sort of like link the cities together with with bike paths.

[00:12:37]So, that's really cool. There's still progress being made with the bike and walking infrastructure which is really really cool to see. We got public trash cans and recycling bins which help keep the streets clean as well as volunteers who go around keeping the streets clean.

[00:12:49]There's also lots of like community green spaces and also community gardens in our area like in our direct community. And again, this is just like direct. This is just to me. As a whole, some other eco things that California does is they're actually pretty good about preserving public lands. We have lots of state parks. We have the most national parks of any other state in the country. We also have state preserves and national monuments and national forests which that's a topic for another day. So, really quite good on the state level about preserving our public lands and protecting ecosystems and old growth and the coast and things like that. Sort of. There's lots of drilling off the coast. There's some nuance there, okay?

[00:13:27]And that's a vlogging land. Like it's not perfect. That's not what I'm saying here. But like especially compared to the national government right now, we're doing pretty good when it comes to public lands. And a really cool initiative that California is currently working on and is I think about to achieve before the deadline. It's called like 30 by 30. I think it's conserving 30% of California's land by 2030. So, that means like establishing national parks, conservation areas, preserves and things like that by 2030 and I think that's really cool. So, those are my pros and cons of somebody who's living in California. To all the haters out there, no, California did not make me like this. I had a septum piercing and blue hair before I moved here. I was a dirty leftist before I moved here.

[00:14:12]>> [laughter] >> And I do have to say, you know, like reminiscing and thinking back on it.

[00:14:15]When I lived in in Nevada, when I lived in Las Vegas, we interacted with Californians a lot and I did establish a stereotype and I'm like, "Ugh, I don't like them. They're kind of rude and they're really bad drivers and all this and that. I don't like California." Like we visited California a few times, several times when we lived in Nevada and I was like, "Ooh, California's weird. I don't know. It's just so hard to to describe."

[00:14:37]>> [laughter] >> California is weird. It is. But like not in a bad way. It's just like this is just so different from Nevada. What's going on here? And then when Dan took his first job here, he's he's at a different job now and he's like, "Hey, so we're moving to California." I said, "Oh, no, not California." But now I'm like, "I don't think I want to leave."

[00:14:56]>> [laughter] >> I love California. It has really really grown on me and I do really attribute that to our community here. It's such a rich, diverse community. Everybody is so kind and welcoming and friendly and nice. Everybody here revolves around community. There's always something going on. Everybody knows everybody and is so friendly about it. I grew up in a town like that, too, where everybody knew everybody, but in like a nosey way and I did not like that and I thought I always hated living in a small town, but like I actually like it. I really like it when people of that small town are friendly and kind, accepting of everybody and are inclusive, celebrate one another and celebrate community and uplift small businesses. Ugh, I love it so much. Are there some things that I critique about where I currently live and then the broader California as a whole? Absolutely. But at the for the most part, absolutely love it here besides like the gas prices and the house prices. I highly recommend. We're keeping it positive. Okay, that is all that I have for today. Thank you for coming along. Please let us know down below what do you hate about your town or your state. What are they doing wrong for the planet? What areas can they improve in, but also what are they doing right? Let's celebrate and nitpick down below. I will see you in the next one.

[00:16:05]Thank you for watching. I truly appreciate your time. But until then, remember that your small actions make a big difference in the long run. Bye, guys.

[00:16:12]Okay.

[00:16:13]We got to move on this one. The sun is creeping up.

[00:16:20]Um also, sweater thrifted. This is a thrift find. I'm obsessed with her. Oh my gosh. Okay, thank you for admiring.

[00:16:27]The first is that we are just so rural rural.

[00:16:32]>> [laughter] >> I think it's really funny when when people who don't speak English try to say that word because like even I can't.

[00:16:37]I'm a native English speaker. Rural rural rural rural. Now I'm self-conscious. This one's a bit of a pro and con. California actually mandated statewide curbside recomposting. Mhm. Pro, California mandated curbside recyc-