9 ms·

There’s an easy solution: tax landfill by 1,000+%. If consumers had to pay a significant amount for each load of trash removed from their home, you’d see the m

There’s an easy solution: tax landfill by 1,000+%. If consumers had to pay a significant amount for each load of trash removed from their home, you’d see the market for ultra low waste products skyrocket. And then the economic value of recycling—from careful sorting by homeowners to the processing of material by recyclers—would immediately make sense.

vorpalhex 7y ago
So you want the poor to be gouged?
- sjwright 7y ago
  The economy is already massively skewed against low income people; they’re already “gouged” in a dozen other ways. The solution for that is UBI, not giving up on the environment.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    Oh, very practical, so we'll just gouge them until we get UBI sorted then?
    - sjwright 7y ago
      There are countless ways to improve the situation for the poor from being gouged in countless other ways. Telling the environment to fuck off isn’t among the more sensible ones.
      - vorpalhex 7y ago
        You flipped the consequent. I'm not suggesting we should tell the environment off, I'm suggesting we shouldn't solve our issues by charging the poor a 1000% markup they can't afford. I also think it's unethical to fix world hunger by eating children for what it's worth, as convenient as that might be.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Illegal dumping and increased spending on policing would be the result.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sjwright 7y ago
  True, but the upsides would massively offset the downsides.
  - filesystem 7y ago
    Burning trash is an environmental nightmare. https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/html/index-3.html https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/html/i...
moosey 7y ago
Or the entity that makes the trash should pay for it. That would reduce the amount of packaging that is made by forcing the cost on the producer. If I'm going to be forced to live in a supply side economy, then the supply side should pay the taxes. The same is true for the huge numbers of empty Walmarts throughout the US. We should have made them escrow demolition costs at the time the building was made. If you put the costs at the very end then all of the trash will still be produced, but nobody could throw it away. Our entire society saves production and reduces waste if you punish the producers of that waste instead.
- sjwright 7y ago
  Is an aluminium can trash? Or is it highly recyclable material? That’s largely a decision of the consumer, not the manufacturer.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    "Recyclable material" is a type of trash...
filesystem 7y ago
I don't understand how that is really that easy. I personally don't know of anywhere (at least in the US) that measures the trash output of individual homes. So all existing curbside trash pickup infrastructure would need to be overhauled to implement measurement at the time of collection. Additionally, since trash pickup is handled by municipal / city governments currently, a new system needs to be put in place to provide oversight / enforcement of measurement & fees. The startup cost here would be enormous. Also, this doesn't even take into account apartment buildings where individuals dump their trash into trash cutes / shared bins / etc. You would essentially need to retrofit every apartment building with a collection system capable of calculating individual output, or charge all residents of each building equally.
- chiara87 7y ago
  My hometown does that - every household has its own bins (with some form of tracking) and you pay for each time they get emptied during door-to-door collection (faq in Italian https://contarina.it/faq-domande-frequenti/ https://contarina.it/faq-domande-frequenti/). Needless to say, the population density is not so high, so it works well. The recycling rate is one of the highest in Europe (source https://zerowasteeurope.eu/2015/02/new-case-study-the-story-of-contarina-85-recycling-is-possible/ https://zerowasteeurope.eu/2015/02/new-case-study-the-story-...)
usrusr 7y ago
Bad idea, because unregulated dumping would still be far too easy to get away with.
sornaensis 7y ago
Easy by what possible metric. Even if you did do this in someplace all you'd get is a bunch of pissed off locals who get rid of those ordinances. Any anti-wasteful packaging strategy would have to go after the businesses producing these products by hiking taxes on them. Which we could easily do in the US if we had something like a comprehensive tiered VAT instead of the nightmarish sales tax system we've got instead. In my view, we should be building more effective landfilling infrastructure and stop telling people that putting their garbage in the yellow bin is somehow better or more moral or environmentally friendly. We have plenty of land that can be used to sequester waste, the issue here is people have been tricked for years into thinking that recycling is better or somehow good for the environment while ignoring the effects of energy intensive recycling plants and waste incineration because it's a feel good talking point. Plastic you throw in the recycling either gets burned or sent somewhere it might be processed and apparently end up free in the environment. We should just be sticking it in the ground until we can enact policies to limit waste.
pfdietz 7y ago
This fails because of illegal dumping. Make trash sufficiently expensive and people will just dump it by the side of the road somewhere.

vorpalhex 7y ago

So you want the poor to be gouged?

sjwright 7y ago
The economy is already massively skewed against low income people; they’re already “gouged” in a dozen other ways. The solution for that is UBI, not giving up on the environment.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  Oh, very practical, so we'll just gouge them until we get UBI sorted then?
  - sjwright 7y ago
    There are countless ways to improve the situation for the poor from being gouged in countless other ways. Telling the environment to fuck off isn’t among the more sensible ones.
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      You flipped the consequent. I'm not suggesting we should tell the environment off, I'm suggesting we shouldn't solve our issues by charging the poor a 1000% markup they can't afford. I also think it's unethical to fix world hunger by eating children for what it's worth, as convenient as that might be.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Illegal dumping and increased spending on policing would be the result.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sjwright 7y ago
True, but the upsides would massively offset the downsides.
- filesystem 7y ago
  Burning trash is an environmental nightmare. https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/html/index-3.html https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/html/i...

moosey 7y ago

Or the entity that makes the trash should pay for it. That would reduce the amount of packaging that is made by forcing the cost on the producer. If I'm going to be forced to live in a supply side economy, then the supply side should pay the taxes. The same is true for the huge numbers of empty Walmarts throughout the US. We should have made them escrow demolition costs at the time the building was made. If you put the costs at the very end then all of the trash will still be produced, but nobody could throw it away. Our entire society saves production and reduces waste if you punish the producers of that waste instead.

sjwright 7y ago
Is an aluminium can trash? Or is it highly recyclable material? That’s largely a decision of the consumer, not the manufacturer.
- mindslight 7y ago
  "Recyclable material" is a type of trash...

filesystem 7y ago

I don't understand how that is really that easy. I personally don't know of anywhere (at least in the US) that measures the trash output of individual homes. So all existing curbside trash pickup infrastructure would need to be overhauled to implement measurement at the time of collection. Additionally, since trash pickup is handled by municipal / city governments currently, a new system needs to be put in place to provide oversight / enforcement of measurement & fees. The startup cost here would be enormous. Also, this doesn't even take into account apartment buildings where individuals dump their trash into trash cutes / shared bins / etc. You would essentially need to retrofit every apartment building with a collection system capable of calculating individual output, or charge all residents of each building equally.

chiara87 7y ago
My hometown does that - every household has its own bins (with some form of tracking) and you pay for each time they get emptied during door-to-door collection (faq in Italian https://contarina.it/faq-domande-frequenti/ https://contarina.it/faq-domande-frequenti/). Needless to say, the population density is not so high, so it works well. The recycling rate is one of the highest in Europe (source https://zerowasteeurope.eu/2015/02/new-case-study-the-story-of-contarina-85-recycling-is-possible/ https://zerowasteeurope.eu/2015/02/new-case-study-the-story-...)

usrusr 7y ago

Bad idea, because unregulated dumping would still be far too easy to get away with.

sornaensis 7y ago

Easy by what possible metric. Even if you did do this in someplace all you'd get is a bunch of pissed off locals who get rid of those ordinances. Any anti-wasteful packaging strategy would have to go after the businesses producing these products by hiking taxes on them. Which we could easily do in the US if we had something like a comprehensive tiered VAT instead of the nightmarish sales tax system we've got instead. In my view, we should be building more effective landfilling infrastructure and stop telling people that putting their garbage in the yellow bin is somehow better or more moral or environmentally friendly. We have plenty of land that can be used to sequester waste, the issue here is people have been tricked for years into thinking that recycling is better or somehow good for the environment while ignoring the effects of energy intensive recycling plants and waste incineration because it's a feel good talking point. Plastic you throw in the recycling either gets burned or sent somewhere it might be processed and apparently end up free in the environment. We should just be sticking it in the ground until we can enact policies to limit waste.

pfdietz 7y ago

This fails because of illegal dumping. Make trash sufficiently expensive and people will just dump it by the side of the road somewhere.