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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
by 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 agoRaising 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 agoWhen 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 agoMy 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 agoExcept 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.
- yellowapple 4y ago> Nutritionally it's almost identical to water, which has many health benefits. Heavy water is exactly nutritionally identical to water, and yet drinking it exclusively for multiple days will kill you. "Your body extracts the same amount of nutrients from A as it does B therefore A is as healthy as B" is, needless to say, a deeply flawed argument.
- specialist 4y ago> hurting the poor Same rhetoric is used against soda tax. Sweet water isn't food. It's poison. Doubly so for artificial sweeteners. There's an abundance of other flavored water choices, for all peoples. Some even non-harmful. Coffee, tea, horchata, oat milk, lemonaides, frescas, aqua du jamaica, seltzer, ad nauseum. Poor people need (and deserve) free and abundant potable water. Not soda.
- yellowapple 4y ago> Coffee, tea Not everyone is looking for caffeination. > horchata, oat milk, lemonaides, frescas, aqua du jamaica The sugar content on these is on-par with soda.
- specialist 4y agoThe question is "Do Pigovian taxes hurt the poor?" Not "Is sugar the same as sugar?"
- yellowapple 4y agoSoda taxes are sin taxes, not Pigovian taxes. Also, if the reason to tax soda is specifically because it's unhealthy, then it's asinine to not extend that logic consistently.
- specialist 4y agoHow else would you characterize Pigovian taxes?
- yellowapple 4y agoPigovian taxes are on the production/supply side, sin taxes are on the consumption/demand side. Supply-side taxation is much more economically efficient, much harder to dodge, and far less regressive than demand-side taxation, and also ensures that it's producers and importers motivated to produce/import less harmful products rather than punishing consumers for being consumers.