My partner and I had an unpleasant encounter on a French train yesterday. We were returning to London by train after spending the week on a skiing holiday. In the seat behind us was a middle-aged man from London, nursing an arm injury from snowboarding. He started making a call to a friend or partner, broadcasting the conversation to the entire carriage due to his phone being on speaker. After a while, we asked him if he could take his phone off speaker, and I suggested that he take his call in the space between the train carriages, but he had, let’s say, some choice words for us.
This got me thinking about negative externalities – in economics, the unintended negative impacts when a good or service is produced or consumed – of which noise pollution from a phone conversation in a quiet train carriage is a very simple example. Unwanted noise from loudspeakers can be particularly stressful for some people with heightened sensitivity to noise, and so-called ‘headphone dodgers’ have been the subject of enforcement efforts in the UK and France in the last year: in August 2025, Transport for London started a campaign against passengers playing music or taking calls on loudspeaker, and in France, a passenger called David was fined 200 euros for taking a call to his sister on loudspeaker in a quiet area of Nantes station, after being warned and refusing to comply.
Skiing, unfortunately, comes with many more serious examples of negative externalities. There’s the international travel aspect of it, which often involves short-haul flights with a high carbon impact (we try to take the train, but the cost and inconvenience of train travel is often much higher than flying); there’s the infrastructure necessary to sustain winter sports at alpine resorts, and which, as the Guardian reported recently, creates disposal requirements when resorts become unsustainable due to the retreat of good snow conditions to higher altitudes; microplastic pollution from the degradation of ski clothing and equipment, and contamination from the use of ski waxes that contain ‘forever chemicals’ (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS).
Some of these impacts can be mitigated. I purchase carbon offsets from the United Nations Climate Action portal each year for our household to achieve (on paper at least) a carbon-negative state and have been doing so since 2018; although the efficacy of the carbon credit market as a direct response to climate change is highly disputed, I feel that doing this helps to fund projects with environmental and social benefits and is a practice worth continuing, if for no other reason than it acknowledges the negative externalities associated with the lifestyles we have and tries to balance this with some positive contributions elsewhere in the world, in a way that governmental efforts have so far failed to attain. We also achieve a high level of plastic recycling, thanks to weekly recycling collections provided by our council and soft plastic collection points at our local Tesco supermarket. But it can feel like all these efforts are a drop in the ocean compared to the totality of human economic activity, so much of which is predicated upon the extraction of finite resources and the exploitation of labour; and where recycling efforts are insufficient, non-existent or even fraudulent.
All of this is to say that as consumers, I think we should try to exercise due diligence and reduce the negative externalities caused by our activities, using the tools available to us. This means understanding how and where the goods and services we consume are produced; choosing goods that are more repairable and last longer, reducing the need to replace them as frequently; and ensuring that items reaching their end of life are recycled or disposed of responsibly – and supporting changes in society to facilitate these efforts at a population level.
If all that sounds like a lot of work: to be honest, it is, and it’s hard both to get right consistently and to stay up to date on all the issues. I also sympathise with critics who point out that it’s unfair to blame end users and consumers for the unwanted impacts of consumption when it’s specific companies and industry groups that have the power to change the way they produce goods and services, but spend their time and money to fight regulation that could help reduce the impacts of their work. This week’s legal ruling against Meta and Google, on the addictive design of their social media platforms, sets a legal precedent that could see tech companies being held responsible for harm caused by the design of their services, for example.
There will be some remaining unavoidable costs after all our efforts at mitigation, of course, which we will (literally) have to live with, and we should cut ourselves a little slack if we fall short in some areas. And the train guy on his phone? Well, he later apologised – blaming the painkillers he was on – and offered to buy us drinks. Apology accepted and faith in humanity undimmed…
Further reading
- Will Kenton, updated August 2025. Understanding Externalities: Positive and Negative Economic Impacts. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/externality.asp. Investopedia guide to understanding externalities in economics.
- United Nations. United Nations Carbon Offset Platform. https://unfccc.int/climate-action/united-nations-carbon-offset-platform. UN website that allows individuals and businesses to purchase carbon credits that support various green projects.
- Aurelia Foster, August 2025. TfL asks ‘nuisance’ mobile users to wear headphones. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce83p1ej8j7o. BBC News article on Transport for London’s efforts to discourage nuisance behaviour around phone noise on public transport.
- Letara Draghia, February 2025. Train passenger fined for taking a call on loudspeaker. https://euroweeklynews.com/2025/02/07/train-passenger-fined-for-taking-a-call-on-loudspeaker/. News report of a 200 euro fine issued to a man called David after taking a call on loudspeaker at Nantes station.
- Phoebe Weston, December 2025. ‘Ghost resorts’: as hundreds of ski slopes lie abandoned, will nature reclaim the Alps? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/27/alps-france-skiing-snow-warming-resorts-closing-ceuze-landscape. Guardian article discussing the closure of French ski resorts due to the increasing altitude of the snow line, a result of global warming.
- Stefano Gelmini, August 2025. “Promoting pollution”: Low-cost flights up to 26 TIMES cheaper than trains, new report reveals. https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/low-cost-flights-up-to-26-times-cheaper-than-trains/. Greenpeace press release about a report on the discrepancy between train and flight prices on cross-border routes in Europe, especially in France, Spain and the UK.
- Rebecca Trager, February 2026. PFAS waxes found on skis and snowboards lead to three Olympic disqualifications. https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/pfas-waxes-found-on-skis-and-snowboards-lead-to-three-olympic-disqualifications/4022977.article. A report on the disqualification of three Winter Olympics athletes using banned ski waxes containing PFAS, a historical first.
- Kali Hays, Nardine Saad and Regan Morris, March 2026. Campaigners welcome Meta and YouTube’s defeat in landmark social media addiction trial. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c747x7gz249o. BBC News article reporting the outcome of a trial in Los Angeles that found the addictive nature of Meta and Google social media platforms caused harm to a young woman known as ‘Kaley’.