4 ms·

I think this makes the same mistake that has always been made with respect to plastic -- it assumes the responsibility of making recycling work should fall to t

by topaz0 4y ago

I think this makes the same mistake that has always been made with respect to plastic -- it assumes the responsibility of making recycling work should fall to the consumer, when it should really be imposed on the producer. If the responsibility and cost were imposed on the packaging manufacturers to make sure that most of the packaging they produce get recycled, they would be forced to find a solution. They could then respond to this by choosing to move away from plastic altogether, or choosing materials that are easier to recycle, or raising prices and using the proceeds to pay for effective collection efforts and so forth. As it stands, the packagers' incentives are all aligned with plastic packaging -- it is cheaper to produce, cheaper to transport, and more versatile than other materials. As it stands, all of the costs of the waste stream from plastics are borne by consumers and the environment.

andrekandre 4y ago
agree, there really needs to be strong negative incentives to reduce plastic packaging... we consumers don't have a choice of "apples in plastic" vs "apples in cardboard" its just whatever the supermarket buys is what we get
InCityDreams 4y ago
>, or raising prices and using the proceeds to pay for effective collection efforts and so forth. Of course, i agree with the proposal, but i fear it would require some serious strongarming from a higher body to actually ensure the monies taken ended up being actually used correctly. Which would probably cost more money.
- topaz0 4y ago
  It would take political will, yes.
nroets 4y ago
Germany, Slovakia and a few other countries have pushed the responsibility of recycling PET bottles onto the producers and retailers: There is a 25 cent deposit on a 2 liter PET bottle. Consumers deposit their bottles into machines at the retailer for a 25 c discount on their purchase. Frequently there are queues at those machines. My guess is that people earn less than minimum wage recycling. Hungary (and Romania) have no deposit on their pet bottles, but some retailers do have similar machines. Consumers get 1 forint for every bottle they deposit. That's 1 dollar for every 400 bottles returned! Earlier this year, I found that soda/cola/pop is more expensive in Slovakia than Hungary (at Lidl). So the retailers raise prices, hurting the poor.
- mint2 4y ago
  Raising prices on soda isn’t exactly hurting the poor anymore than taxes on cigarettes do, it’s an unnecessary and unhealthy product that then increase the healthcare cost to them and the state. Poor people need variety and choice, but not unbridled “choice” as decided by Coca Cola and other soft drink conglomerates and their extensive advertising budgets and marketing deals with convenience stores.
- kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
  When I was in college there was a 10-cent deposit on glass bottles. Guess how many we recycled? ALL of them! It wasn’t a huge imposition either.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    My state in Australia has had 10c deposits for as long as I can remember (Well I remember it being 5c a long time ago). Personally I never reclaim it, I just chuck them in standard recycling because it's basically impossible to claim the refund without a car since the system is set up so you have to take it through recycling center drive thrus which are placed well outside of the city.
- oblio 4y ago
  > Earlier this year, I found that soda/cola/pop is more expensive in Slovakia than Hungary (at Lidl). So the retailers raise prices, hurting the poor. Besides the soda being bad aspect, how is this hurting the poor? They can return the bottle for money, the system is working as intended.
  - nroets 4y ago
    Except the price excluding the deposit in Slovakia is higher than the price in Hungary. That's how the retailer pays for the machine. I disagree that sugar free soda is unhealthy. Nutritionally it's almost identical to water, which has many health benefits. We can discuss this endlessly. Or we can go look for some peer reviewed research.
kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
It really was a brilliant maneuver on the part of business to frame this as an issue of consumer choice.
bsdetector 4y ago
You could apply the same argument to food products. You buy food and it produces potentially harmful waste that has to be dealt with, so the producer should be held responsible, right? A tax if their food is thrown out uneaten, charges for how much burden their food puts on waste treatment plants. Clearly ridiculous and creates a perverse incentive to put more sugars, less fillers, and less fiber into the foods. In the same way it's a bad idea with plastics; when plastic is the best solution then anything they use instead will be worse, and how much worse it'll be will be proportional to how much you inflate the cost of plastic (which must be significant since plastic is often the far superior choice). What does make sense -- just like human waste treatment plants for food waste -- is plastic and other waste incineration plants. They're not cheap or profitable on their own, but they solve the actual problem in a fair and equitable manner without creating perverse incentives. Publicly funded research to create packaging materials better than plastic is another reasonable solution, but it may be that plastic is the best we can do for now. But raising the cost of plastic until it's unreasonable to use is like an inverse tragedy of the commons; solving a big problem causing many small ones instead of many small problems causing a big one.
- olejorgenb 4y ago
  You are only arguing against the against the packagers using other materials in response to the suggested regulation. (Also note that "increasing the cost to make plastic unenviable" is not the proposed regulation) GP suggests that the packagers could also use easier-to-recycle plastic, or raise prices to pay for collecting and sorting. As an example: Bottle deposits work well - IIRC resulting in 70-90% of all bottles being collected. Much harder to implement for general plastic waste of course, but it show that recycling can sort of work: PET recycling: > Worldwide, approximately 7.5 million tons of PET were collected in 2011. This gave 5.9 million tons of flake. In 2009 3.4 million tons were used to produce fibre, 500,000 tons to produce bottles, 500,000 tons to produce APET sheet for thermoforming, 200,000 tons to produce strapping tape and 100,000 tons for miscellaneous applications. Thus only approximately 15% of collected PET bottles were actually recycled into new bottles, the rest being used in generally non-recyclable products. 15% recycled isn't great from a "circular economy" perspective, but most of the rest is downcycled which probably is also a good thing. (although if that flake is used instead of more environmentally friendly alternatives due the probably dirt-cheap price the equation becomes more complex.)
voisin 4y ago
I would vote for any elected official that ran on a platform of “internalizing externalities”. Almost all the problems we face today are the result of someone’s actions benefiting only as a result negative externalities and so they scale up that action. It’s madness.
Ferret7446 4y ago
That's not viable either. Should companies control what their customers do with a physical product? That would destroy right to repair, just for starters. Consumers MUST take responsibility for what they buy, if they should have the freedom to use them how they wish.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > Consumers MUST take responsibility for what they buy How are they expected to do that when the vast majority of products they buy are wrapped in excessive amounts of plastic (and when the very few exceptions are more expensive)? The only reasonable solution here is to address the supply side of the equation.

by topaz0 4y ago

andrekandre 4y ago

agree, there really needs to be strong negative incentives to reduce plastic packaging... we consumers don't have a choice of "apples in plastic" vs "apples in cardboard" its just whatever the supermarket buys is what we get

InCityDreams 4y ago

>, or raising prices and using the proceeds to pay for effective collection efforts and so forth. Of course, i agree with the proposal, but i fear it would require some serious strongarming from a higher body to actually ensure the monies taken ended up being actually used correctly. Which would probably cost more money.

topaz0 4y ago
It would take political will, yes.

nroets 4y ago

Germany, Slovakia and a few other countries have pushed the responsibility of recycling PET bottles onto the producers and retailers: There is a 25 cent deposit on a 2 liter PET bottle. Consumers deposit their bottles into machines at the retailer for a 25 c discount on their purchase. Frequently there are queues at those machines. My guess is that people earn less than minimum wage recycling. Hungary (and Romania) have no deposit on their pet bottles, but some retailers do have similar machines. Consumers get 1 forint for every bottle they deposit. That's 1 dollar for every 400 bottles returned! Earlier this year, I found that soda/cola/pop is more expensive in Slovakia than Hungary (at Lidl). So the retailers raise prices, hurting the poor.

mint2 4y ago
Raising prices on soda isn’t exactly hurting the poor anymore than taxes on cigarettes do, it’s an unnecessary and unhealthy product that then increase the healthcare cost to them and the state. Poor people need variety and choice, but not unbridled “choice” as decided by Coca Cola and other soft drink conglomerates and their extensive advertising budgets and marketing deals with convenience stores.
kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
When I was in college there was a 10-cent deposit on glass bottles. Guess how many we recycled? ALL of them! It wasn’t a huge imposition either.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  My state in Australia has had 10c deposits for as long as I can remember (Well I remember it being 5c a long time ago). Personally I never reclaim it, I just chuck them in standard recycling because it's basically impossible to claim the refund without a car since the system is set up so you have to take it through recycling center drive thrus which are placed well outside of the city.
oblio 4y ago
> Earlier this year, I found that soda/cola/pop is more expensive in Slovakia than Hungary (at Lidl). So the retailers raise prices, hurting the poor. Besides the soda being bad aspect, how is this hurting the poor? They can return the bottle for money, the system is working as intended.
- nroets 4y ago
  Except the price excluding the deposit in Slovakia is higher than the price in Hungary. That's how the retailer pays for the machine. I disagree that sugar free soda is unhealthy. Nutritionally it's almost identical to water, which has many health benefits. We can discuss this endlessly. Or we can go look for some peer reviewed research.

kwertyoowiyop 4y ago

It really was a brilliant maneuver on the part of business to frame this as an issue of consumer choice.

bsdetector 4y ago

You could apply the same argument to food products. You buy food and it produces potentially harmful waste that has to be dealt with, so the producer should be held responsible, right? A tax if their food is thrown out uneaten, charges for how much burden their food puts on waste treatment plants. Clearly ridiculous and creates a perverse incentive to put more sugars, less fillers, and less fiber into the foods. In the same way it's a bad idea with plastics; when plastic is the best solution then anything they use instead will be worse, and how much worse it'll be will be proportional to how much you inflate the cost of plastic (which must be significant since plastic is often the far superior choice). What does make sense -- just like human waste treatment plants for food waste -- is plastic and other waste incineration plants. They're not cheap or profitable on their own, but they solve the actual problem in a fair and equitable manner without creating perverse incentives. Publicly funded research to create packaging materials better than plastic is another reasonable solution, but it may be that plastic is the best we can do for now. But raising the cost of plastic until it's unreasonable to use is like an inverse tragedy of the commons; solving a big problem causing many small ones instead of many small problems causing a big one.

olejorgenb 4y ago
You are only arguing against the against the packagers using other materials in response to the suggested regulation. (Also note that "increasing the cost to make plastic unenviable" is not the proposed regulation) GP suggests that the packagers could also use easier-to-recycle plastic, or raise prices to pay for collecting and sorting. As an example: Bottle deposits work well - IIRC resulting in 70-90% of all bottles being collected. Much harder to implement for general plastic waste of course, but it show that recycling can sort of work: PET recycling: > Worldwide, approximately 7.5 million tons of PET were collected in 2011. This gave 5.9 million tons of flake. In 2009 3.4 million tons were used to produce fibre, 500,000 tons to produce bottles, 500,000 tons to produce APET sheet for thermoforming, 200,000 tons to produce strapping tape and 100,000 tons for miscellaneous applications. Thus only approximately 15% of collected PET bottles were actually recycled into new bottles, the rest being used in generally non-recyclable products. 15% recycled isn't great from a "circular economy" perspective, but most of the rest is downcycled which probably is also a good thing. (although if that flake is used instead of more environmentally friendly alternatives due the probably dirt-cheap price the equation becomes more complex.)

voisin 4y ago

I would vote for any elected official that ran on a platform of “internalizing externalities”. Almost all the problems we face today are the result of someone’s actions benefiting only as a result negative externalities and so they scale up that action. It’s madness.

Ferret7446 4y ago

That's not viable either. Should companies control what their customers do with a physical product? That would destroy right to repair, just for starters. Consumers MUST take responsibility for what they buy, if they should have the freedom to use them how they wish.

yellowapple 4y ago
> Consumers MUST take responsibility for what they buy How are they expected to do that when the vast majority of products they buy are wrapped in excessive amounts of plastic (and when the very few exceptions are more expensive)? The only reasonable solution here is to address the supply side of the equation.