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Perhaps we should start doing something like what Taiwan did with their trash: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/separation-anxiety/ https://99percentinvis

Perhaps we should start doing something like what Taiwan did with their trash: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/separation-anxiety/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/separation-anxiety/ > The trucks only accept trash bags officially sanctioned by the government of Taiwan which come in a distinctive blue color, complete with an official seal. The bags range in price and size, from 3 liters to 120 liters. The most popular bag is 25 liters (similar to a tiny bathroom wastebasket liner), which costs about $5 for a pack of 20. This effectively makes a pay-as-you-waste model, incentivizing citizens to recycle and compost as much as possible since those services are offered for free. The musical garbage trucks are tailed by a recycling truck, where workers help the residents sort their recyclables and compost into thirteen distinct bins. Should people fail to sort their materials properly, the government will fine them up to $200.

oldcynic 8y ago
Targets the wrong place. It may reduce contamination of recycling streams, but does nothing to encourage less production. Perhaps a combination approach: $5 for a pack of small bin liners, or return your waste to the shop for free. If Tesco were filled with piles of consumer waste given back to them I posit the problem would be on the way to being solved within weeks.
- kwhitefoot 8y ago
  > If Tesco were filled with piles of consumer waste given back to them I vaguely remember seeing something about this happening in Germany where households are charged by the amount of rubbish that has to be collected. So people unwrap things in the shop and leave the packaging behind.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    Honestly, companies really ought to be charged for the disposal of all that packaging they choke their products with. There seems to be no back pressure stopping manufacturers from wrapping a 10g USB stick in 400g of plastic packaging/advertising.
- detaro 8y ago
  In Germany we had rules that shops have to take back packaging, but especially with online shops this just wasn't used enough, so now the shop or manufacturer has to pay a (weight-based) fee for all the packaging they give to consumers. Pretty small though from what I've heard.
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    I’d be in favor of requiring manufacturers to take back unneeded product packaging, paying for postage if necessary. EDIT: Reading more of this thread, it looks like everyone is suggesting this, so my comment does not add much. So why is this obvious solution not implemented?
    - mcny 8y ago
      > So why is this obvious solution not implemented? I have no inside information but I think it is because manufacturers will collude to add this as a visible added cost to the cost of the product. Consumers will think stuff became more expensive because of some idiots in DC/Brussels.
      - wutbrodo 8y ago
        It's a collective action problem like any other. Collusion on a wide scale in competitive markets is pretty damn difficult, since one company can change their manufacturing processes to produce less waste and suddenly undercut everyone else's prices. "Passing the whole price increase onto the consumer" rarely withstands scrutiny, excluding cases with very low demand elasticity or very oligarchic suppliers. Neither of these are the case for the vast majority of packaged goods that are sold.
        maxerickson 8y ago
        The incentive to minimize their packaging already exists though, both in shipping costs and just the material costs.
    - detaro 8y ago
- magduf 8y ago
  >It may reduce contamination of recycling streams, but does nothing to encourage less production. Sure it does. If you're going to slapped with a $200 fine every time you screw up with your recycling, and you have to pay by the bag to throw stuff in the landfill, if you have half a brain, you're going to think twice about every purchase you make, and if you really need it. That $1 water bottle that costs you $200 because your kid threw it in the wrong bin is going to make you not want to give your kid another disposable water bottle. Producers only produce as much product as consumers purchase. Less consumption will result in less production.
  - steve19 8y ago
    Or it may just create perverse incentives fir people to throw everything in landfill. Not 100% sure where to put that $1 drink bottle, throw in the trash and don't risk a $200. Not sure how that could be prevented.
    - quantum_magpie 8y ago
      Throwing recyclable goods in to the landfill bag nets you a fine. That's the whole point - you sort correctly, or you pay up. If you are unable to sort your trash - you don't buy stuff. The landfill bags are for non-recyclable items.
      - lmm 8y ago
        That makes no sense as policy. 1 cubic metre of landfill space costs the same whether you fill it with "recyclable" or "non-recyclable" items.
- MBCook 8y ago
  It’s not perfect but it tries to price an externality back in. Consumers may demand better packaging if this was a thing in the US, providing manufacturers to improve their waste level.
- madaxe_again 8y ago
  They do it really straightforwardly where I live in Wales. Garbage is collected every six weeks, from a 120L wheelie bin. Recycling (six streams) is collected weekly. Either you recycle, or you drown in trash.
- intended 8y ago
  Less production means less growth - means less future revenue - which means less chance of paying off all those loans predicated on consumption growth patterns. Also - consumption isn’t all bad. There’s many poor people who can’t afford much, and we very much are promising a better life where they can consume goods and lead healthy lives (goods such as medicine, clean water and chocolate as much as Coca Cola in a plastic bottle) And also - if people were charged for old school packaging, costs would go up. People wouldn’t buy as much and this would start a new round of economic troubles. At its price point, I suspect that plastic is so cheap, that even with all the pollution and waste being collected, it’s still ends up with positive utility. There’s a report on carry bags which shows reusable cloth bags have significantly higher environmental impact because of the cost of production costs, water use and eventual decay into some carbon gas like Methane.
gaius 8y ago
which costs about $5 for a pack of 20 I’ve never understood why recycling wasn’t self-sustaining, isn’t there value in the raw material? When I was young reusing was the thing; a glass milk bottle went back to the dairy was sterilised and used again the next day. One bottle, with a recyclable aluminium foil lid, could be used again and again and again. Nowadays we make a glass bottle, use it once, then melt it down and make a slightly different bottle, and we think that’s green!
- oldcynic 8y ago
  Ridiculous isn't it? We even kept milk bottle tops and handed in the aluminium foil, and the daily milk was delivered in an electric vehicle. Bottles got reused enough times (a little less with milk bottles) that older Coke, other pop, and beer bottles started to look rather archaeological from going through the lines 40+ times.
- gambiting 8y ago
  It's always cheaper to make new packaging than recycle old one. It's extremely hard to make any sort of business out of recycling old material. Like you said, reusing would help - but glass has the issue of being very heavy so you're burning more fuel to move it around, while it only takes a drop of oil to make a new plastic bottle that weighs 1/20 of an equivalent glass one. I'd love to see all drinks being sold exclusively in glass bottles that you have to pay a deposit for - that's how it was when I was a kid in Poland, you had to pay a little bit extra for the bottle and you'd get it back when returning it.
  - pwenzel 8y ago
    My college room mates and I were still doing this with Miller High Life bottles as late as 2003-2004. If you collected a dozen cases you'd have enough returnables for a free case of beer!
    - state_less 8y ago
      Similar for the plastic beer pitchers at UW-Madison's terrace. You'd pay like a $1 deposit on the pitcher, if you bring the pitcher back, you get the dollar. Drunk kids or the indifferent would leave their plastic pitcher and some enterprising person would come by pick it up and return it for cash. There is a lake nearby, so it's important these didn't make it in the lake. The deposit system seemed to be pretty effective. Folks took an active role. Maybe there are modern day systems that could be developed. I wonder if people would subscribe to a Uber/UPS like system for fluids like beer, soda, milk, yogurt or water? Comes in sterilized glass bottles using an electric vehicle. I suppose it could be reusable plastic, but for folks paying a premium, glass would be nice. Something like $50 month for a couple cases of beer, going up in price as you order more.
gandreani 8y ago
Holy moly! Thirteen bins!! Still not clear how people are prevented from throwing garbage into the recycle bins. Is the recyclable stuff not placed in bags and therefore easy to be vetted by the staff?
- ensignavenger 8y ago
  Japan (Sapporo) has a similar system- recycling was placed directly in bins (I don't think there were 13, but there were several).
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
These kinds of punitive policies have a very obvious side-effect. You dump the garbage in a ravine or stream, or somewhere easy to dump. And so what if you get caught. You get fined a few hundred dollars, where you saved 5x that by dumping. The problem with recycling is it's recycling... There's a reason why the phrase is "Reduce, Reuse, and finally Recycle". The upstream firms are Reducing their costs with little regard to reducing environmental impact. The upstream firms guarantee you can't reuse - it's a missed sale. So, you percolate through the layers, and then recycling is this all important thing.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  This. Where I used to live the only scrap yard would only accept nonferrous metals and the towns would charge for scrap metal. Washing machines on the side of the road was a routine sight, or it was until a new scrap yard that would accept just about anything metal opened up. edit: I'm struggling to wrap my mind around why this is getting down-voted. I'm providing a real world example of the behavior the person I'm replying to described. I'm not endorsing dumping things on the side of the road. Do people seriously not believe that above a certain price point people will illegally dump their trash and risk the fine?
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    I mean with scrap metal or whatever it's one thing, but your weekly trash? Unless the cost is exorbitant people are probably just going to pay to have the bags for their trash. Like I think in Japan they were about $5; I'm not going to start trucking my fish bones to the local stream to save five bucks.
    - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      It all really depends on how much painpoint there is regarding refuse/recycling. The more rules, fines, restrictions the state implements, the less people will comply. And lack of compliance means stuff is thrown away in others' yards, dumped on the commons, or otherwise hidden to the nature of the trash. Because of onerousness with local ordnances with regarding paint, many people just end up hiding the containers in dog food bags. I've seen quite a few of those already in the local dumpster.
aeternus 8y ago
Is careful sorting of trash/recycling really a good use of time? Seems better to put that effort towards development of techniques to sort en-masse. Likely controversial, but I think there is also an argument for simply throwing hard-to-recycle items in a landfill. If consumption continues to increase, it will likely become economically viable to eventually mine those landfills for raw materials.
- jdavis703 8y ago
  I'd say yes it is a good use of our time. I really want ours to be the generation that stops punting problems out to the next generation. I'd be happy if my friend's children don't need to grow up worrying about how to deal with oceans filled with plastics, global warming induced fire storms and flooded coastal cities.
  - slavik81 8y ago
    I'm pretty careful about following my city's recyling guidelines, but I don't think recycling is always the right way to handle a material. It doesn't neccessary solve the problems you mentioned. Improperly sorted plastics are burried in a landfill. They will not fill the ocean with plastic whether recycled or trashed. Global warming is mostly a matter of energy usage, so recycling only helps that when it's more energy-efficient than the alternative.
    - Reason077 8y ago
      The fact that beaches around the world are covered in huge quantities of washed up plastic suggests that someone, somewhere is dumping an awful lot of it into the ocean. (And not just in Asia)
      - sjg007 8y ago
        It's mostly Asia dumping.
  - DisruptiveDave 8y ago
dwighttk 8y ago
If 25 Liters is a “tiny” bathroom trash can I shudder to think what is used in the kitchen.
- jakobegger 8y ago
  Right. We put 3 liter bags into our tiny bathroom trash can, and 25 liter bags into the big kitchen trash can.
cperciva 8y ago
In Vancouver we have standardized waste bins which come in different sizes, and the amount you pay the city annually for waste collection depends on the size of bin you choose. (Recyclables are handled separately and there's no charge for them regardless of the volume you're leaving for collection.)
- njarboe 8y ago
  This system is a great incentive for people to put all sorts of stuff into recycling that they shouldn't.
  - xori 8y ago
    I'm not sure what it's like in Vancouver, but in Niagara Falls if the garbage people see something in your recycle bins that isn't supposed to be there they don't pick up the bin and leave a note saying what was wrong.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
jdietrich 8y ago
Norway and the Netherlands are successfully trialling waste-to-energy with carbon capture. If some waste cannot be economically recycled, why not use it as fuel for electricity generation? We're still going to need some amount of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. A yoghurt pot or a pizza box might not be recyclable using current processes, but it's perfectly good fuel. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610216000084 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187661021... http://www.vivis.de/phocadownload/Download/2017_eaa/2017_EaA_133-144_Stuen.pdf http://www.vivis.de/phocadownload/Download/2017_eaa/2017_EaA...
virusduck 8y ago
We have the pay-as-you-throw waste model in my city in GA. I think it works very well. We also have a very liberal recycling policy. I think these things really changed my family's trash habits for the better.
siruncledrew 8y ago
Japan has a similar bag system too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv68j5KQUU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv68j5KQUU4
mikec3010 8y ago
Now you doubled CO2 emissions of your fleet and incentivize people to litter or dump in public trash cans. A better solution would be human or robotic waste sorting at the dump, or clean incineration.
- titzer 8y ago
  Agree completely. Saw it firsthand in Fiji. City trash fee just drives people to dump in the bushes. My suggestion of adding dumpsters was met with concerns about reducing tax revenues. Yeah, they don't have dumpsters because they are afraid people will put trash in them, FFS :(
- moltar 8y ago
  I’ve teavelled entire Taiwan by car and did not notice any excessive dumping.
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    Yes, and that's a dataset of n=1. Things like littering have a million different factors go into them, including culture. It's not unreasonable to think that in other cultures, increasing the incentive to litter would in fact increase litter.
    - quantum_magpie 8y ago
      An exponential fine on littering would, however, absolutely destroy any incentives on littering. Starting with $10^n, where n is the n'th time you are caught littering. Also a corporate fine for dumping trash and waste illegally, $1000^n. It really is not hard to take care of your environment!
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- SapporoChris 8y ago
  I have to counter regarding incentives with my own annecdote. I was buying a lot of sparkling water and got tired of collecting and recycling the empties. I bought a popular carbonating unit. I suspect culture will have a huge impact on how well the solution works. I would love robotic waste sorting, I hope someone is working on that!
gumby 8y ago
This works pretty well in Germany too, and in Palo Alto, but it causes people in the UK and in eastern California (and likely other places too) to just dump their trash by the side of the road.
moltar 8y ago
If anyone is interested in seeing these crazy garbage trucks, I have a video. You can hear them coming from far away. https://youtu.be/BtpWn6PuDX0 https://youtu.be/BtpWn6PuDX0
Reason077 8y ago
This model of only accepting trash in official bags, or requiring a pre-paid sticker/tag for each bin/bag collected is quite common around the world. Certainly not unique to Taiwan.
joshe 8y ago
Switzerland does this too, the bags have a little stamp or sticker that costs $5. There are also 10 different bins to presort waste. It works quite well. They put a lot of effort into the design and ease of use at the collection stations (which are free vs the for pay garbage). It's called "polluter pays". They also enforce like Taiwan, $10,000 find for illegal dumping. And they actually look through your trash for bills and letters with your address. The Swiss don't seem to love the system, more like tolerate it. Cool pictures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_management_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_management_in_Switzerlan... There's a picture of the 10 bin recycling thing halfway down this page: https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-make-Kathmandu-a-clean-city https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-make-Kathmandu-a-clean-city
- fuck_google 8y ago
  Many people just take their trash from Switzerland to France because it's cheaper and easier for them.
throwaway5752 8y ago
-removed by author-
- MBCook 8y ago
  Because no city had ever passed laws that the President doesn’t like. And the President is also in charge of local waste disposal, as we all know.
  - throwaway5752 8y ago
    -removed by author-
    - TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago
      > the executive branch followed certain norms around this, until this administration Which norms? Which administration didn't act differently than all others? Reagan firing the FAA unionizers was a new one. Obama said he couldn't “waive away the law Congress put in place.” DHS went and legalized a few million anyway, years later. Sounds very familiar, but somehow different? I'm not sure what you're talking about, but it sounds awfully revisionist.
emodendroket 8y ago
It sounds similar to the Japanese model. But it requires serious changes to the type of goods produced. For instance, Japanese drink bottles have labels that can easily be removed because the bottle, cap, and label are recycled separately. It's not like you just start categorizing the trash and you're done. Also, the way waste management is handled at the municipal level definitely complicates things for us.
hristov 8y ago
This is a very bad idea, because people will just throw out trash in the environment. It is a thousand times better to have trash thrown in a proper dump rather than on the street, in a back alley or in the wilderness. Most of the plastic trash that is causing problems is improperly dumped trash.
maxerickson 8y ago
25 liters is like a medium to large kitchen trash. Given an estimated 13 liters per person per week in the household here, $5 for 20 isn't providing a whole lot of incentive.
driverdan 8y ago
Pay per bag is not uncommon in the US where trash is collected by private companies. Many charge for each bag they pick up.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
That pay-as-you-go system is used in Wellington, NZ as well. Recycling bags are free, but you have to pay for landfill bags (around $2). That way, there's an incentive to recycle as you save money.
arkh 8y ago
> the residents sort their recyclables and compost into thirteen distinct bins 13. There's a moment you have to choose between the fine and getting the fuck out of stupid land. Around 3 different bins will do it for me: consumers waste is nothing compared to industrial waste. Trash sorting is the little act which help some people feel good but helps a lot less than not going on their annual holiday to the other side of the world. It's green theatre.

oldcynic 8y ago

Targets the wrong place. It may reduce contamination of recycling streams, but does nothing to encourage less production. Perhaps a combination approach: $5 for a pack of small bin liners, or return your waste to the shop for free. If Tesco were filled with piles of consumer waste given back to them I posit the problem would be on the way to being solved within weeks.

kwhitefoot 8y ago
> If Tesco were filled with piles of consumer waste given back to them I vaguely remember seeing something about this happening in Germany where households are charged by the amount of rubbish that has to be collected. So people unwrap things in the shop and leave the packaging behind.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Honestly, companies really ought to be charged for the disposal of all that packaging they choke their products with. There seems to be no back pressure stopping manufacturers from wrapping a 10g USB stick in 400g of plastic packaging/advertising.
detaro 8y ago
In Germany we had rules that shops have to take back packaging, but especially with online shops this just wasn't used enough, so now the shop or manufacturer has to pay a (weight-based) fee for all the packaging they give to consumers. Pretty small though from what I've heard.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  I’d be in favor of requiring manufacturers to take back unneeded product packaging, paying for postage if necessary. EDIT: Reading more of this thread, it looks like everyone is suggesting this, so my comment does not add much. So why is this obvious solution not implemented?
  - mcny 8y ago
    > So why is this obvious solution not implemented? I have no inside information but I think it is because manufacturers will collude to add this as a visible added cost to the cost of the product. Consumers will think stuff became more expensive because of some idiots in DC/Brussels.
    - wutbrodo 8y ago
      It's a collective action problem like any other. Collusion on a wide scale in competitive markets is pretty damn difficult, since one company can change their manufacturing processes to produce less waste and suddenly undercut everyone else's prices. "Passing the whole price increase onto the consumer" rarely withstands scrutiny, excluding cases with very low demand elasticity or very oligarchic suppliers. Neither of these are the case for the vast majority of packaged goods that are sold.
      - maxerickson 8y ago
        The incentive to minimize their packaging already exists though, both in shipping costs and just the material costs.
  - detaro 8y ago
magduf 8y ago
>It may reduce contamination of recycling streams, but does nothing to encourage less production. Sure it does. If you're going to slapped with a $200 fine every time you screw up with your recycling, and you have to pay by the bag to throw stuff in the landfill, if you have half a brain, you're going to think twice about every purchase you make, and if you really need it. That $1 water bottle that costs you $200 because your kid threw it in the wrong bin is going to make you not want to give your kid another disposable water bottle. Producers only produce as much product as consumers purchase. Less consumption will result in less production.
- steve19 8y ago
  Or it may just create perverse incentives fir people to throw everything in landfill. Not 100% sure where to put that $1 drink bottle, throw in the trash and don't risk a $200. Not sure how that could be prevented.
  - quantum_magpie 8y ago
    Throwing recyclable goods in to the landfill bag nets you a fine. That's the whole point - you sort correctly, or you pay up. If you are unable to sort your trash - you don't buy stuff. The landfill bags are for non-recyclable items.
    - lmm 8y ago
      That makes no sense as policy. 1 cubic metre of landfill space costs the same whether you fill it with "recyclable" or "non-recyclable" items.
MBCook 8y ago
It’s not perfect but it tries to price an externality back in. Consumers may demand better packaging if this was a thing in the US, providing manufacturers to improve their waste level.
madaxe_again 8y ago
They do it really straightforwardly where I live in Wales. Garbage is collected every six weeks, from a 120L wheelie bin. Recycling (six streams) is collected weekly. Either you recycle, or you drown in trash.
intended 8y ago
Less production means less growth - means less future revenue - which means less chance of paying off all those loans predicated on consumption growth patterns. Also - consumption isn’t all bad. There’s many poor people who can’t afford much, and we very much are promising a better life where they can consume goods and lead healthy lives (goods such as medicine, clean water and chocolate as much as Coca Cola in a plastic bottle) And also - if people were charged for old school packaging, costs would go up. People wouldn’t buy as much and this would start a new round of economic troubles. At its price point, I suspect that plastic is so cheap, that even with all the pollution and waste being collected, it’s still ends up with positive utility. There’s a report on carry bags which shows reusable cloth bags have significantly higher environmental impact because of the cost of production costs, water use and eventual decay into some carbon gas like Methane.

gaius 8y ago

which costs about $5 for a pack of 20 I’ve never understood why recycling wasn’t self-sustaining, isn’t there value in the raw material? When I was young reusing was the thing; a glass milk bottle went back to the dairy was sterilised and used again the next day. One bottle, with a recyclable aluminium foil lid, could be used again and again and again. Nowadays we make a glass bottle, use it once, then melt it down and make a slightly different bottle, and we think that’s green!

oldcynic 8y ago
Ridiculous isn't it? We even kept milk bottle tops and handed in the aluminium foil, and the daily milk was delivered in an electric vehicle. Bottles got reused enough times (a little less with milk bottles) that older Coke, other pop, and beer bottles started to look rather archaeological from going through the lines 40+ times.
gambiting 8y ago
It's always cheaper to make new packaging than recycle old one. It's extremely hard to make any sort of business out of recycling old material. Like you said, reusing would help - but glass has the issue of being very heavy so you're burning more fuel to move it around, while it only takes a drop of oil to make a new plastic bottle that weighs 1/20 of an equivalent glass one. I'd love to see all drinks being sold exclusively in glass bottles that you have to pay a deposit for - that's how it was when I was a kid in Poland, you had to pay a little bit extra for the bottle and you'd get it back when returning it.
- pwenzel 8y ago
  My college room mates and I were still doing this with Miller High Life bottles as late as 2003-2004. If you collected a dozen cases you'd have enough returnables for a free case of beer!
  - state_less 8y ago
    Similar for the plastic beer pitchers at UW-Madison's terrace. You'd pay like a $1 deposit on the pitcher, if you bring the pitcher back, you get the dollar. Drunk kids or the indifferent would leave their plastic pitcher and some enterprising person would come by pick it up and return it for cash. There is a lake nearby, so it's important these didn't make it in the lake. The deposit system seemed to be pretty effective. Folks took an active role. Maybe there are modern day systems that could be developed. I wonder if people would subscribe to a Uber/UPS like system for fluids like beer, soda, milk, yogurt or water? Comes in sterilized glass bottles using an electric vehicle. I suppose it could be reusable plastic, but for folks paying a premium, glass would be nice. Something like $50 month for a couple cases of beer, going up in price as you order more.

gandreani 8y ago

Holy moly! Thirteen bins!! Still not clear how people are prevented from throwing garbage into the recycle bins. Is the recyclable stuff not placed in bags and therefore easy to be vetted by the staff?

ensignavenger 8y ago
Japan (Sapporo) has a similar system- recycling was placed directly in bins (I don't think there were 13, but there were several).

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

These kinds of punitive policies have a very obvious side-effect. You dump the garbage in a ravine or stream, or somewhere easy to dump. And so what if you get caught. You get fined a few hundred dollars, where you saved 5x that by dumping. The problem with recycling is it's recycling... There's a reason why the phrase is "Reduce, Reuse, and finally Recycle". The upstream firms are Reducing their costs with little regard to reducing environmental impact. The upstream firms guarantee you can't reuse - it's a missed sale. So, you percolate through the layers, and then recycling is this all important thing.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
This. Where I used to live the only scrap yard would only accept nonferrous metals and the towns would charge for scrap metal. Washing machines on the side of the road was a routine sight, or it was until a new scrap yard that would accept just about anything metal opened up. edit: I'm struggling to wrap my mind around why this is getting down-voted. I'm providing a real world example of the behavior the person I'm replying to described. I'm not endorsing dumping things on the side of the road. Do people seriously not believe that above a certain price point people will illegally dump their trash and risk the fine?
- emodendroket 8y ago
  I mean with scrap metal or whatever it's one thing, but your weekly trash? Unless the cost is exorbitant people are probably just going to pay to have the bags for their trash. Like I think in Japan they were about $5; I'm not going to start trucking my fish bones to the local stream to save five bucks.
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    It all really depends on how much painpoint there is regarding refuse/recycling. The more rules, fines, restrictions the state implements, the less people will comply. And lack of compliance means stuff is thrown away in others' yards, dumped on the commons, or otherwise hidden to the nature of the trash. Because of onerousness with local ordnances with regarding paint, many people just end up hiding the containers in dog food bags. I've seen quite a few of those already in the local dumpster.

aeternus 8y ago

Is careful sorting of trash/recycling really a good use of time? Seems better to put that effort towards development of techniques to sort en-masse. Likely controversial, but I think there is also an argument for simply throwing hard-to-recycle items in a landfill. If consumption continues to increase, it will likely become economically viable to eventually mine those landfills for raw materials.

jdavis703 8y ago
I'd say yes it is a good use of our time. I really want ours to be the generation that stops punting problems out to the next generation. I'd be happy if my friend's children don't need to grow up worrying about how to deal with oceans filled with plastics, global warming induced fire storms and flooded coastal cities.
- slavik81 8y ago
  I'm pretty careful about following my city's recyling guidelines, but I don't think recycling is always the right way to handle a material. It doesn't neccessary solve the problems you mentioned. Improperly sorted plastics are burried in a landfill. They will not fill the ocean with plastic whether recycled or trashed. Global warming is mostly a matter of energy usage, so recycling only helps that when it's more energy-efficient than the alternative.
  - Reason077 8y ago
    The fact that beaches around the world are covered in huge quantities of washed up plastic suggests that someone, somewhere is dumping an awful lot of it into the ocean. (And not just in Asia)
    - sjg007 8y ago
      It's mostly Asia dumping.
- DisruptiveDave 8y ago

dwighttk 8y ago

If 25 Liters is a “tiny” bathroom trash can I shudder to think what is used in the kitchen.

jakobegger 8y ago
Right. We put 3 liter bags into our tiny bathroom trash can, and 25 liter bags into the big kitchen trash can.

cperciva 8y ago

In Vancouver we have standardized waste bins which come in different sizes, and the amount you pay the city annually for waste collection depends on the size of bin you choose. (Recyclables are handled separately and there's no charge for them regardless of the volume you're leaving for collection.)

njarboe 8y ago
This system is a great incentive for people to put all sorts of stuff into recycling that they shouldn't.
- xori 8y ago
  I'm not sure what it's like in Vancouver, but in Niagara Falls if the garbage people see something in your recycle bins that isn't supposed to be there they don't pick up the bin and leave a note saying what was wrong.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

jdietrich 8y ago

Norway and the Netherlands are successfully trialling waste-to-energy with carbon capture. If some waste cannot be economically recycled, why not use it as fuel for electricity generation? We're still going to need some amount of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. A yoghurt pot or a pizza box might not be recyclable using current processes, but it's perfectly good fuel. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610216000084 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187661021... http://www.vivis.de/phocadownload/Download/2017_eaa/2017_EaA_133-144_Stuen.pdf http://www.vivis.de/phocadownload/Download/2017_eaa/2017_EaA...

virusduck 8y ago

We have the pay-as-you-throw waste model in my city in GA. I think it works very well. We also have a very liberal recycling policy. I think these things really changed my family's trash habits for the better.

siruncledrew 8y ago

Japan has a similar bag system too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv68j5KQUU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv68j5KQUU4

mikec3010 8y ago

Now you doubled CO2 emissions of your fleet and incentivize people to litter or dump in public trash cans. A better solution would be human or robotic waste sorting at the dump, or clean incineration.

titzer 8y ago
Agree completely. Saw it firsthand in Fiji. City trash fee just drives people to dump in the bushes. My suggestion of adding dumpsters was met with concerns about reducing tax revenues. Yeah, they don't have dumpsters because they are afraid people will put trash in them, FFS :(
moltar 8y ago
I’ve teavelled entire Taiwan by car and did not notice any excessive dumping.
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  Yes, and that's a dataset of n=1. Things like littering have a million different factors go into them, including culture. It's not unreasonable to think that in other cultures, increasing the incentive to litter would in fact increase litter.
  - quantum_magpie 8y ago
    An exponential fine on littering would, however, absolutely destroy any incentives on littering. Starting with $10^n, where n is the n'th time you are caught littering. Also a corporate fine for dumping trash and waste illegally, $1000^n. It really is not hard to take care of your environment!
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SapporoChris 8y ago
I have to counter regarding incentives with my own annecdote. I was buying a lot of sparkling water and got tired of collecting and recycling the empties. I bought a popular carbonating unit. I suspect culture will have a huge impact on how well the solution works. I would love robotic waste sorting, I hope someone is working on that!

gumby 8y ago

This works pretty well in Germany too, and in Palo Alto, but it causes people in the UK and in eastern California (and likely other places too) to just dump their trash by the side of the road.

moltar 8y ago

If anyone is interested in seeing these crazy garbage trucks, I have a video. You can hear them coming from far away. https://youtu.be/BtpWn6PuDX0 https://youtu.be/BtpWn6PuDX0

Reason077 8y ago

This model of only accepting trash in official bags, or requiring a pre-paid sticker/tag for each bin/bag collected is quite common around the world. Certainly not unique to Taiwan.

joshe 8y ago

Switzerland does this too, the bags have a little stamp or sticker that costs $5. There are also 10 different bins to presort waste. It works quite well. They put a lot of effort into the design and ease of use at the collection stations (which are free vs the for pay garbage). It's called "polluter pays". They also enforce like Taiwan, $10,000 find for illegal dumping. And they actually look through your trash for bills and letters with your address. The Swiss don't seem to love the system, more like tolerate it. Cool pictures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_management_in_Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_management_in_Switzerlan... There's a picture of the 10 bin recycling thing halfway down this page: https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-make-Kathmandu-a-clean-city https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-make-Kathmandu-a-clean-city

fuck_google 8y ago
Many people just take their trash from Switzerland to France because it's cheaper and easier for them.

throwaway5752 8y ago

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MBCook 8y ago
Because no city had ever passed laws that the President doesn’t like. And the President is also in charge of local waste disposal, as we all know.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
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  - TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago
    > the executive branch followed certain norms around this, until this administration Which norms? Which administration didn't act differently than all others? Reagan firing the FAA unionizers was a new one. Obama said he couldn't “waive away the law Congress put in place.” DHS went and legalized a few million anyway, years later. Sounds very familiar, but somehow different? I'm not sure what you're talking about, but it sounds awfully revisionist.

emodendroket 8y ago

It sounds similar to the Japanese model. But it requires serious changes to the type of goods produced. For instance, Japanese drink bottles have labels that can easily be removed because the bottle, cap, and label are recycled separately. It's not like you just start categorizing the trash and you're done. Also, the way waste management is handled at the municipal level definitely complicates things for us.

hristov 8y ago

This is a very bad idea, because people will just throw out trash in the environment. It is a thousand times better to have trash thrown in a proper dump rather than on the street, in a back alley or in the wilderness. Most of the plastic trash that is causing problems is improperly dumped trash.

maxerickson 8y ago

25 liters is like a medium to large kitchen trash. Given an estimated 13 liters per person per week in the household here, $5 for 20 isn't providing a whole lot of incentive.

driverdan 8y ago

Pay per bag is not uncommon in the US where trash is collected by private companies. Many charge for each bag they pick up.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

That pay-as-you-go system is used in Wellington, NZ as well. Recycling bags are free, but you have to pay for landfill bags (around $2). That way, there's an incentive to recycle as you save money.

arkh 8y ago

> the residents sort their recyclables and compost into thirteen distinct bins 13. There's a moment you have to choose between the fine and getting the fuck out of stupid land. Around 3 different bins will do it for me: consumers waste is nothing compared to industrial waste. Trash sorting is the little act which help some people feel good but helps a lot less than not going on their annual holiday to the other side of the world. It's green theatre.