"The better strategy would be to charge a fee, up front, for all goods that reflects their cost of disposal." That's exactly how it's done in multiple European

"The better strategy would be to charge a fee, up front, for all goods that reflects their cost of disposal." That's exactly how it's done in multiple European countries (IIRC Netherlands was the pioneer there, but there are others) - there's a tax on packaging and in some cases disposable plastic stuff, it gets collected at the point of manufacture or first sale and is used to subsidize sorting/collecting/recycling or reprocessing or incineration, just as you propose. Alternatively, there are schemes such as Germany where the manufacturers are responsible for ensuring that their packaging gets mostly collected and reprocessed afterwards, so instead of a tax, most manufacturers cooperate to directly fund a private program ('green dot') which organizes collection from households and recycling/reprocessing/other elimination of that packaging waste.