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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 wh
by 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 agoCollect 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 agoThis 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.