4 ms·

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

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.)
- robocat 4y ago
  > packagers could also use easier-to-recycle plastic, or raise prices to pay for collecting and sorting But does that actually help the environment, or just cause worse environmental impact? The dollar value of something is a good approximation of the environmental damage. Spending more on something causes environmental damage, for an average products. Greenwashing is a problem: when you buy that expensive green product, the outcome can often be worse for the environment than the cheaper “non-green” product.
  - olejorgenb 4y ago
    > The dollar value of something is a good approximation of the environmental damage It's an rough approximation, not sure if I'll agree it's a good one. (CFCs comes to mind) > But does that actually help the environment I agree that's not necessarily the case for all usages. But if such an regulation would decrease the amount of plastic pollution, that would go along way making up for those instances. I also suspect easier-to-recycle sometimes are primarily at odds with branding and marketing and not essential material properties. EDIT: I don't think the regulation "packages must ensure all packaging is recycled" necessarily is the best possible regulation. A less steering regulation would maybe result in more incineration (which I personally think is a decent option as long the emissions are properly filtered/cleaned and the energy is utilized). But somehow pushing more of the external cost associated with packaging (and plastic in general) is surly the way to go.
- bsdetector 4y ago
  Contrary to your point, a deposit doesn't shift responsibility to the producers at all but rather to the consumers. Consumers pay the deposit and then get it refunded when they behave and suffer the consequences to their time or don't behave and are fined the deposit. The only thing a deposit accomplishes regarding producers is to enable them to use materials that are more expensive, but less so than consumers' tolerance for annoyance. With a 25 cent per bottle deposit required to make their time recycling worthwhile and companies still using plastic it really shows the enormous gap between plastic and the next closes alternative. It's also not an equitable solution. There's no real material difference between plastic bottles, plastic wraps, and plastic bags - they're all plastics after all - yet they're treated differently; you don't have say a five cent deposit on the plastic your fruit is wrapped in, but you do have a deposit for a bottle.
topaz0 4y ago
Raising the price is only necessary if you can't figure out a way to dispose of it properly. Maybe that's the case. If so, then we shouldn't be using it at all. So it would be a good outcome in that case if it is "unreasonable to use".

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.)

robocat 4y ago
> packagers could also use easier-to-recycle plastic, or raise prices to pay for collecting and sorting But does that actually help the environment, or just cause worse environmental impact? The dollar value of something is a good approximation of the environmental damage. Spending more on something causes environmental damage, for an average products. Greenwashing is a problem: when you buy that expensive green product, the outcome can often be worse for the environment than the cheaper “non-green” product.
- olejorgenb 4y ago
  > The dollar value of something is a good approximation of the environmental damage It's an rough approximation, not sure if I'll agree it's a good one. (CFCs comes to mind) > But does that actually help the environment I agree that's not necessarily the case for all usages. But if such an regulation would decrease the amount of plastic pollution, that would go along way making up for those instances. I also suspect easier-to-recycle sometimes are primarily at odds with branding and marketing and not essential material properties. EDIT: I don't think the regulation "packages must ensure all packaging is recycled" necessarily is the best possible regulation. A less steering regulation would maybe result in more incineration (which I personally think is a decent option as long the emissions are properly filtered/cleaned and the energy is utilized). But somehow pushing more of the external cost associated with packaging (and plastic in general) is surly the way to go.
bsdetector 4y ago
Contrary to your point, a deposit doesn't shift responsibility to the producers at all but rather to the consumers. Consumers pay the deposit and then get it refunded when they behave and suffer the consequences to their time or don't behave and are fined the deposit. The only thing a deposit accomplishes regarding producers is to enable them to use materials that are more expensive, but less so than consumers' tolerance for annoyance. With a 25 cent per bottle deposit required to make their time recycling worthwhile and companies still using plastic it really shows the enormous gap between plastic and the next closes alternative. It's also not an equitable solution. There's no real material difference between plastic bottles, plastic wraps, and plastic bags - they're all plastics after all - yet they're treated differently; you don't have say a five cent deposit on the plastic your fruit is wrapped in, but you do have a deposit for a bottle.

topaz0 4y ago

Raising the price is only necessary if you can't figure out a way to dispose of it properly. Maybe that's the case. If so, then we shouldn't be using it at all. So it would be a good outcome in that case if it is "unreasonable to use".