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What would be a good strategy to start small with an alternative to plastic. Without bumping into the trillion dollar industry head on and losing?
by krm01 7y ago
What would be a good strategy to start small with an alternative to plastic. Without bumping into the trillion dollar industry head on and losing?
- hanniabu 7y agoThere's solutions out there but it's a chicken and egg problem. They're more expensive because of low quantities because nobody wants to commit to them, but if the industry as a whole would switch them you'd have economy of scale to make it competitive. There's also multiple solutions so it's a question of which one to go with. This would also be a good initiative to subsidize but instead we give those for sugar products and gas.
- klingonopera 7y agoIn Germany, for beverages, we have a system where you pay a deposit for a plastic or glass bottle and receive it back when you return the empty bottle[0][1]. That creates monetary incentive to collect those bottles and they thus hardly contribute to litter. There are single- and multi-use bottles in circulation. I find it to be a very successful system and believe that it could be expanded to all packaging. I'm somewhat perplexed that even in Germany this idea isn't talked about more often (or at all). [0]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfandsystem https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfandsystem [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_vending_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_vending_machine EDIT: The systems are called "container-deposit legislations": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation