3 ms·

If I rip my candy bar wrapper in half, it seems non-trivial to determine how much to give me for each half.

by lkbm 3y ago

endisneigh 3y ago
in that scenario why should you get anything? rip it in a way that leaves it in one piece (albeit ripped) and return it. people will get with the program soon enough. after all the entire point of what I propose is to fix the behavior.
- nathancahill 3y ago
  Correct. No one crushes empty soda cans in Michigan because you lose the deposit.
- lkbm 3y ago
  Okay, but who is checking your wrapper to make sure it's not ripped? If I bring in a bag of two hundred candy wrappers, does someone sit there and carefully check each one? This doesn't seem easily automatable. Is this a small candy bar wrapper, or half of a big candy bar wrapper? It's not an occasional wrapper. It's the block of cheese I finished off when cooking dinner yesterday, the container of mushrooms I emptied, the bag of tortillas. Most household trash just changed from "toss in the trash and it gets dumped somewhere" to "bring to someone to check each item for completeness"? I'm sure we'd end up with a lot less single-use packaging as a result, but we use single-use packaging for a reason and your proposal amounts to a near-ban. Let's not pretend this is a simple "just charge a deposit and littering stops". It's "charge a deposit, discover the deposit is non-viable, and single-use packaging as a whole stops".
  - zanecodes 3y ago
    Put a QR code on it, if it scans then you get the deposit? I would've suggested using the existing barcode but since they're 1-dimensional they could be ripped many times and each piece would still scan...
  - endisneigh 3y ago
    My proposal is hardly a ban, simply charging people for the externality. It would be up to the manufacturer to think of an appropriate mechanism to allow for deposits. Simplest way would be to use cardboard lined with plastic but that has its own issues
    - lkbm 3y ago
      If the overhead is zero, it's merely charging people for the externality. If the overhead is prohibitively high, it's effectively a ban. I don't see any explanation of how to keep the overhead—in this case, the cost (time or money) of managing returns—low enough to be viable. The other commenter's "just put a QR code" helps a lot, but it still makes household trash much more burdensome than the current "put it in a bin and someone collects it" system. How much would you pay to not have to take your kitchen trash somewhere and scan each piece? That's the overhead here.

If I rip my candy bar wrapper in half, it seems non-trivial to determine how much to give me for each half.

by lkbm 3y ago

If I rip my candy bar wrapper in half, it seems non-trivial to determine how much to give me for each half.

in that scenario why should you get anything? rip it in a way that leaves it in one piece (albeit ripped) and return it. people will get with the program soon enough. after all the entire point of what I propose is to fix the behavior.

nathancahill 3y ago
Correct. No one crushes empty soda cans in Michigan because you lose the deposit.
lkbm 3y ago
Okay, but who is checking your wrapper to make sure it's not ripped? If I bring in a bag of two hundred candy wrappers, does someone sit there and carefully check each one? This doesn't seem easily automatable. Is this a small candy bar wrapper, or half of a big candy bar wrapper? It's not an occasional wrapper. It's the block of cheese I finished off when cooking dinner yesterday, the container of mushrooms I emptied, the bag of tortillas. Most household trash just changed from "toss in the trash and it gets dumped somewhere" to "bring to someone to check each item for completeness"? I'm sure we'd end up with a lot less single-use packaging as a result, but we use single-use packaging for a reason and your proposal amounts to a near-ban. Let's not pretend this is a simple "just charge a deposit and littering stops". It's "charge a deposit, discover the deposit is non-viable, and single-use packaging as a whole stops".
- zanecodes 3y ago
  Put a QR code on it, if it scans then you get the deposit? I would've suggested using the existing barcode but since they're 1-dimensional they could be ripped many times and each piece would still scan...
- endisneigh 3y ago
  My proposal is hardly a ban, simply charging people for the externality. It would be up to the manufacturer to think of an appropriate mechanism to allow for deposits. Simplest way would be to use cardboard lined with plastic but that has its own issues
  - lkbm 3y ago
    If the overhead is zero, it's merely charging people for the externality. If the overhead is prohibitively high, it's effectively a ban. I don't see any explanation of how to keep the overhead—in this case, the cost (time or money) of managing returns—low enough to be viable. The other commenter's "just put a QR code" helps a lot, but it still makes household trash much more burdensome than the current "put it in a bin and someone collects it" system. How much would you pay to not have to take your kitchen trash somewhere and scan each piece? That's the overhead here.