6 ms·

My suggestion is that every product should include environmental fact sheet, so that consumers could make better decisions. Every product should be tracked thro

by Geee 8y ago

My suggestion is that every product should include environmental fact sheet, so that consumers could make better decisions. Every product should be tracked through the supply chain and every process including energy production and transportation would be included in the final product fact sheet. If consumers would buy more environmentally friendly products, markets would direct every producer and supplier to be more environmentally friendly, without any other government intervention or sanctions. Just make it mandatory to be transparent and to include this information in every product. Put warning labels on products that have missing information.

bendavis381 8y ago
Not just that. Companies should have to pay for their emissions. Like how we have to pay local government to take our garbage, companies should have to pay to pollute the planet. It's insane that Starbucks et al can produce as much waste as they want without any requirement to pay for the damage.
- codeulike 8y ago
  Good luck getting the oil industry to pay for their externalities
  - jakewins 8y ago
    This is already happening with the EU cap-n-trade scheme. Because it was designed to ratchet, it initially had nearly no effect - but in two years quotas will have dropped 21% from the ones set in 2005; by 2030 they will force CO2-equivalent emissions down 43%. Companies that emit CO2-equivalent emissions now will either need to retool to lower emissions, or they need to buy emissions certificates from other companies that have retooled. The end result is much simpler than introducing additional labeling of products for consumers to interpret. Instead, the externalities are removed and prices signal the total cost of production, as they should. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en
  - harryh 8y ago
    The challenge isn't the oil industry, it's regular people. A carbon tax would just make gas more expensive and people don't want that. Keep in mind that in order to be effective we're not talking about "people just pay more," we're talking about "the price is so much higher, people buy a lot less gas."
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - sdornan 8y ago
      How about a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend in which households receive the fees that are levied on polluters? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_and_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_and_dividend
      - tomjen3 8y ago
        That won't work. Imagine a collection of average households, not much different from one another. Each household could spend 10 thousand dollars improving insulation, and with the cap and div scheme it would be paid back in 5 years. After 5 years you are net ahead, so that seems reasonable, right? Except that with the improvements the money they make back is now less, because the total amount of money that gets paid into the cap-and-div is less, so they have essentially lost money, even though the system is supposed to the revenue neutral. Granted in the real world it would be more complicated because not every household is the same, but the system would still not give us a free lunch.
    - bendavis381 8y ago
      I would rephrase it as "the price is so much higher, suppliers are forced to develop alternative products to satisfy demand". Energy suppliers have been given massive subsidies for decades because they don't have to factor in the negative externalities. A carbon cost should be a part of the balance sheet in the way raw materials are. Given that, suppliers will have to innovate their way to bring price back down to equilibrium, or go out of business.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Starbuck pays to have their trash picked up. And the more trash they generate, the more they pay. Granted, maybe they should pay more, but they can't literally produce as much waste as they want and pay nothing.
- ip26 8y ago
  And the reason that makes sense is it isn't just about "punish the evil corporations!". If the emissions had a price, the price of the product would reflect that.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
petermcneeley 8y ago
They game theory just doesnt work out for this idea. You are basically punishing those who care. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBvI9oSD1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBvI9oSD1g
johnny99 8y ago
This is a legit blockchain application.
- Junk_Collector 8y ago
  The power required to track the entire human industrial supply chain using a block-chain algorithm would be so incredible that it would quickly dwarf any possible gains. It would in fact be a significant percentage of all total power consumption in the world.
  - colordrops 8y ago
    That's an absurd claim. It doesn't have to be incentivized through block rewards, but rather through multiple governments passing laws that they submit a certain amount of mining power. The hash rate could be orders of magnitude less than the current Bitcoin hash rate and still be secure against transactional fraud. In fact it doesn't even need to be proof of work based, as long as all entities permitted to operate on the chain are known.
    - sp332 8y ago
      If the authority for verifying and authenticating entities is centralized, you don't need a blockchain. A centralized, publicly-readable database is the same thing.
      - Max_aaa 8y ago
        But then we cannot use buzzwords...
      - colordrops 8y ago
        Where did I say anything about centralization?
        sp332 8y ago
        "all entities permitted to operate on the chain" Who does the permitting?
NickBusey 8y ago
You're assuming this fact sheet would make a difference in the buying behavior of an average consumer.
lumberjack 8y ago
Being "green" is not enough. You also have to be a conscious consumer of electricity. If 40% of the online green electricity is going to heating and lighting the empty houses of the rich, that is still not good. Excessive consumerism is still bad even if the entire process uses entirely green energy.
colordrops 8y ago
Further, this fact sheet should be accessible through an API, rolled up per company, person, and family, and exposed through easy to use applications so anyone could easily know the environmental footprint of any entity. Awareness is the first step to solving any problem, and measurement and reporting would facilitate this. Perhaps we need more draconian laws that would force this on all corporations and individuals, considering the dire consequences.
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
Here's a crazy idea: the environmental fact sheet should be the price tag. Price the environmental impact of a product into the product.
- jpttsn 8y ago
  The money raised should go to you, right?
- sp332 8y ago
  That seems backwards. If the externalities of manufacturing the product are going to hurt me, the manufacturer should be paying me a discount.
  - Armisael16 8y ago
    It doesn’t matter where a tax is actually applied - it’ll be split between the seller and purchaser regardless (the exact split depends on the elasticity of the market).
  - ip26 8y ago
    Ok, how about where the externalities of manufacturing the product hurts someone in Florida, and you in California are the one buying the product?
    - sp332 8y ago
      I think the manufacturer should be the one paying, not the customer.
      - Max_aaa 8y ago
        The customer always pays, as all the manufacturers money comes from customers.
  - vivism 8y ago
    They wouldn't be manufacturing it if there were no demand for it.
lossolo 8y ago
If people would make rational choices based on knowledge there would be no obesity (you have amount of calories on product labels). People are aware that catastrophe is coming but they are in denial. It's just better to not think about it, like with death, you know it will come but you don't think about it, just carry with your life. And I can see the same exact thing with global warming when I talk to different people. It's better to think that I can't do nothing than think I can do something but I will need to change my style of life. There are things one can do to live longer but they require sacrifices, do not eat bad stuff, exercise etc. For a lot of people price is too high. The problem is that in case of global warming those people are making choices for other people also. There is no political will to change things, as every politician knows that the costs for that would be too high today. So that's why they think it's better to postpone this decisions, automatically making the cost a lot higher. There is also believe that someone will figure out a way to stop global warming in his basement and will save the humanity from itself. The problem is a lot more complex than just CO2, it's about the current economic model of the modern society in which we live. Constant growth and resource exploitation are not sustainable for long term.
tomjen3 8y ago
How negatively would that impact the environment? More importantly how will you deal with people who will read such a fact sheet as how to "own the libs" and buy the worst environmental products?
cmutel 8y ago
The method to calculate there fact sheets (or environmental footprints) is called life cycle assessment, and has been trying to come up with labels for a long time. There have been large projects by Walmart and Tesco, for example, to label all their products. The problem is data availability. This is an area where the Hacker News community can help. There is an initiative to replace the closed-source databases used to calculate such labels called BONSAI: https://bonsai.uno/; https://bonsai.uno/; https://github.com/BONSAMURAIS/bonsai https://github.com/BONSAMURAIS/bonsai (I am one of the volunteers). We are doing the best we can, but could really benefit from people with expertise in * Semantic web/RDF (to design and populate the larger database) * Text processing (to use the web as a source of data on production and consumption) * Machine learning/remote sensing (to understand the spatial pattern of industry) There is also an active community focused on energy data and modelling: https://openmod-initiative.org/ https://openmod-initiative.org/

by Geee 8y ago

bendavis381 8y ago

Not just that. Companies should have to pay for their emissions. Like how we have to pay local government to take our garbage, companies should have to pay to pollute the planet. It's insane that Starbucks et al can produce as much waste as they want without any requirement to pay for the damage.

codeulike 8y ago
Good luck getting the oil industry to pay for their externalities
- jakewins 8y ago
  This is already happening with the EU cap-n-trade scheme. Because it was designed to ratchet, it initially had nearly no effect - but in two years quotas will have dropped 21% from the ones set in 2005; by 2030 they will force CO2-equivalent emissions down 43%. Companies that emit CO2-equivalent emissions now will either need to retool to lower emissions, or they need to buy emissions certificates from other companies that have retooled. The end result is much simpler than introducing additional labeling of products for consumers to interpret. Instead, the externalities are removed and prices signal the total cost of production, as they should. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en
- harryh 8y ago
  The challenge isn't the oil industry, it's regular people. A carbon tax would just make gas more expensive and people don't want that. Keep in mind that in order to be effective we're not talking about "people just pay more," we're talking about "the price is so much higher, people buy a lot less gas."
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - sdornan 8y ago
    How about a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend in which households receive the fees that are levied on polluters? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_and_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_and_dividend
    - tomjen3 8y ago
      That won't work. Imagine a collection of average households, not much different from one another. Each household could spend 10 thousand dollars improving insulation, and with the cap and div scheme it would be paid back in 5 years. After 5 years you are net ahead, so that seems reasonable, right? Except that with the improvements the money they make back is now less, because the total amount of money that gets paid into the cap-and-div is less, so they have essentially lost money, even though the system is supposed to the revenue neutral. Granted in the real world it would be more complicated because not every household is the same, but the system would still not give us a free lunch.
  - bendavis381 8y ago
    I would rephrase it as "the price is so much higher, suppliers are forced to develop alternative products to satisfy demand". Energy suppliers have been given massive subsidies for decades because they don't have to factor in the negative externalities. A carbon cost should be a part of the balance sheet in the way raw materials are. Given that, suppliers will have to innovate their way to bring price back down to equilibrium, or go out of business.
ams6110 8y ago
Starbuck pays to have their trash picked up. And the more trash they generate, the more they pay. Granted, maybe they should pay more, but they can't literally produce as much waste as they want and pay nothing.
ip26 8y ago
And the reason that makes sense is it isn't just about "punish the evil corporations!". If the emissions had a price, the price of the product would reflect that.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

petermcneeley 8y ago

They game theory just doesnt work out for this idea. You are basically punishing those who care. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBvI9oSD1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBvI9oSD1g

johnny99 8y ago

This is a legit blockchain application.

Junk_Collector 8y ago
The power required to track the entire human industrial supply chain using a block-chain algorithm would be so incredible that it would quickly dwarf any possible gains. It would in fact be a significant percentage of all total power consumption in the world.
- colordrops 8y ago
  That's an absurd claim. It doesn't have to be incentivized through block rewards, but rather through multiple governments passing laws that they submit a certain amount of mining power. The hash rate could be orders of magnitude less than the current Bitcoin hash rate and still be secure against transactional fraud. In fact it doesn't even need to be proof of work based, as long as all entities permitted to operate on the chain are known.
  - sp332 8y ago
    If the authority for verifying and authenticating entities is centralized, you don't need a blockchain. A centralized, publicly-readable database is the same thing.
    - Max_aaa 8y ago
      But then we cannot use buzzwords...
    - colordrops 8y ago
      Where did I say anything about centralization?
      - sp332 8y ago
        "all entities permitted to operate on the chain" Who does the permitting?

NickBusey 8y ago

You're assuming this fact sheet would make a difference in the buying behavior of an average consumer.

lumberjack 8y ago

Being "green" is not enough. You also have to be a conscious consumer of electricity. If 40% of the online green electricity is going to heating and lighting the empty houses of the rich, that is still not good. Excessive consumerism is still bad even if the entire process uses entirely green energy.

colordrops 8y ago

Further, this fact sheet should be accessible through an API, rolled up per company, person, and family, and exposed through easy to use applications so anyone could easily know the environmental footprint of any entity. Awareness is the first step to solving any problem, and measurement and reporting would facilitate this. Perhaps we need more draconian laws that would force this on all corporations and individuals, considering the dire consequences.

TheCoelacanth 8y ago

Here's a crazy idea: the environmental fact sheet should be the price tag. Price the environmental impact of a product into the product.

jpttsn 8y ago
The money raised should go to you, right?
sp332 8y ago
That seems backwards. If the externalities of manufacturing the product are going to hurt me, the manufacturer should be paying me a discount.
- Armisael16 8y ago
  It doesn’t matter where a tax is actually applied - it’ll be split between the seller and purchaser regardless (the exact split depends on the elasticity of the market).
- ip26 8y ago
  Ok, how about where the externalities of manufacturing the product hurts someone in Florida, and you in California are the one buying the product?
  - sp332 8y ago
    I think the manufacturer should be the one paying, not the customer.
    - Max_aaa 8y ago
      The customer always pays, as all the manufacturers money comes from customers.
- vivism 8y ago
  They wouldn't be manufacturing it if there were no demand for it.

lossolo 8y ago

If people would make rational choices based on knowledge there would be no obesity (you have amount of calories on product labels). People are aware that catastrophe is coming but they are in denial. It's just better to not think about it, like with death, you know it will come but you don't think about it, just carry with your life. And I can see the same exact thing with global warming when I talk to different people. It's better to think that I can't do nothing than think I can do something but I will need to change my style of life. There are things one can do to live longer but they require sacrifices, do not eat bad stuff, exercise etc. For a lot of people price is too high. The problem is that in case of global warming those people are making choices for other people also. There is no political will to change things, as every politician knows that the costs for that would be too high today. So that's why they think it's better to postpone this decisions, automatically making the cost a lot higher. There is also believe that someone will figure out a way to stop global warming in his basement and will save the humanity from itself. The problem is a lot more complex than just CO2, it's about the current economic model of the modern society in which we live. Constant growth and resource exploitation are not sustainable for long term.

tomjen3 8y ago

How negatively would that impact the environment? More importantly how will you deal with people who will read such a fact sheet as how to "own the libs" and buy the worst environmental products?

cmutel 8y ago

The method to calculate there fact sheets (or environmental footprints) is called life cycle assessment, and has been trying to come up with labels for a long time. There have been large projects by Walmart and Tesco, for example, to label all their products. The problem is data availability. This is an area where the Hacker News community can help. There is an initiative to replace the closed-source databases used to calculate such labels called BONSAI: https://bonsai.uno/; https://bonsai.uno/; https://github.com/BONSAMURAIS/bonsai https://github.com/BONSAMURAIS/bonsai (I am one of the volunteers). We are doing the best we can, but could really benefit from people with expertise in * Semantic web/RDF (to design and populate the larger database) * Text processing (to use the web as a source of data on production and consumption) * Machine learning/remote sensing (to understand the spatial pattern of industry) There is also an active community focused on energy data and modelling: https://openmod-initiative.org/ https://openmod-initiative.org/