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> The government could mandate that producers of plastics must offer a convenient and financially attractive way to hand in old plastics. We already have this.

> The government could mandate that producers of plastics must offer a convenient and financially attractive way to hand in old plastics. We already have this. It's called trash can. How would letting the producers handle this instead would change anything? The plastic was still produced and will end up in a landfill or the ocean.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I couldn't speak for other brands, but Brother will give you a free shipping label so you can send your empty toner cartridge back to them. It's not charity, they want it back because they can reuse most of it in ways that a melt-and-remold style recycling scheme can't. I see no reason the same couldn't be true of most packaging, in addition to things like TV's. If you built it, you ought to be uniquely positioned to recycle it. In addition to trying to get consumers to change their habits we should also be fining/billing manufacturers when their stuff end up as litter or in a landfill. If they don't like it, they can redesign their processes to avoid it.
- mrob 3y ago
  I think we should be subsidizing plastics that end up in landfill. It's the best place for it, as it's both safely contained and impractical to take out again, making it a reliable form of carbon sequestration.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    That sounds like a fine idea to me, so long as the product was designed to end up there rather than it being the catch-all solution for anything whose maker didn't think ahead.
tfourb 3y ago
Why not pay people per kg to return plastics. We have a scheme in Germany where you get something like 30 cents per glass bottle that you return. Even people who don't care about this small sum leave their beer bottles in a convenient place for others to pick up as a result. Mandating a non-trivial payment per kg of plastics would create the incentives for people to not only throw stuff in the bin if they find it convenient, but also for others to collect plastic trash that nobody else feels responsible for.
- simiones 3y ago
  Collect it for what? Glass is somewhat easily recyclable, most plastics are not. Even if it's collected with utmost care, it will be taken to a landfill, or "sent to China for recycling" (spilled in the ocean) or burned in a power plant - none of which is that great. Conversely, if it's thrown in the regular trash, it will probably end up in a landfill, which is probably right now the best solution for it.
  - tfourb 3y ago
    This topic is about plastics getting into the environment in an uncontrolled manner being a huge problem. The first step to do something about this would be to make sure that you collect as much of the plastic currently in circulation as possible. Offering a financial reward for collection would be one way to achieve that. If recycling is not an option, burning would at least solve the problem of microplastics, if a complete burn of these materials can be achieved. Controlled storage in a landfill would be another option, until there are better solutions to handle this type of trash. My point was that there are some policy options to approach this problem and "all is lost" neither a constructive, nor factually correct point of view.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago

I couldn't speak for other brands, but Brother will give you a free shipping label so you can send your empty toner cartridge back to them. It's not charity, they want it back because they can reuse most of it in ways that a melt-and-remold style recycling scheme can't. I see no reason the same couldn't be true of most packaging, in addition to things like TV's. If you built it, you ought to be uniquely positioned to recycle it. In addition to trying to get consumers to change their habits we should also be fining/billing manufacturers when their stuff end up as litter or in a landfill. If they don't like it, they can redesign their processes to avoid it.

mrob 3y ago
I think we should be subsidizing plastics that end up in landfill. It's the best place for it, as it's both safely contained and impractical to take out again, making it a reliable form of carbon sequestration.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  That sounds like a fine idea to me, so long as the product was designed to end up there rather than it being the catch-all solution for anything whose maker didn't think ahead.

tfourb 3y ago

Why not pay people per kg to return plastics. We have a scheme in Germany where you get something like 30 cents per glass bottle that you return. Even people who don't care about this small sum leave their beer bottles in a convenient place for others to pick up as a result. Mandating a non-trivial payment per kg of plastics would create the incentives for people to not only throw stuff in the bin if they find it convenient, but also for others to collect plastic trash that nobody else feels responsible for.

simiones 3y ago
Collect it for what? Glass is somewhat easily recyclable, most plastics are not. Even if it's collected with utmost care, it will be taken to a landfill, or "sent to China for recycling" (spilled in the ocean) or burned in a power plant - none of which is that great. Conversely, if it's thrown in the regular trash, it will probably end up in a landfill, which is probably right now the best solution for it.
- tfourb 3y ago
  This topic is about plastics getting into the environment in an uncontrolled manner being a huge problem. The first step to do something about this would be to make sure that you collect as much of the plastic currently in circulation as possible. Offering a financial reward for collection would be one way to achieve that. If recycling is not an option, burning would at least solve the problem of microplastics, if a complete burn of these materials can be achieved. Controlled storage in a landfill would be another option, until there are better solutions to handle this type of trash. My point was that there are some policy options to approach this problem and "all is lost" neither a constructive, nor factually correct point of view.