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This is a bit racist imo, or at the least lacking empathy. It’s a systems problem. Sounds like you (like me) grew up in the 1st world where your country has th

This is a bit racist imo, or at the least lacking empathy. It’s a systems problem. Sounds like you (like me) grew up in the 1st world where your country has the proper trash infrastructure. Additionally, the government and schools provided the basic education about why littering is harmful, and society at large understands it in your country. That’s great. Just because we grew up with this knowledge ingrained into us doesn’t make us “better” people, or better than a filipino person. Some poor countries have poor trash infrastructure, and they do a poor job teaching the ills of littering to their people. That’s unfortunate, but doesn’t make us “better” than them imo. It just means they are poor and uneducated on certain topics. Now to answer your actual question, why should someone in oklahoma pay more. I don’t think it’s ethical or even fair for someone in oklahoma to pay LESS for plastic simply because they do a better job throwing out their trash. Cheap prices for plastic encourage additional plastic use. And additional plastic use means more and more plastic will be entering rivers and oceans around the world, which affects ALL of us, including the person in oklahoma. Plastics enter the food chain, via fish eating them, and even through rainfall once they become microplastic in size. Basically, i’m arguing that “outsourcing” the issue to poor countries won’t solve the problem and is just pushing a cost burden onto already poor countries. A proper solution IMO would discourage plastic production globally, or at least enforce cleanup by the producers of plastic (make them pay for efforts similar to the Ocean Cleanup Project).

potato3732842 2y ago
How is it racist? He just picked a random landlocked first place area and a oceanfront 3rd world place? He could have just as easily chosen South Korea and Brazil or whatever other comparison. I will agree that littering is very much cultural.
eikenberry 2y ago
If an educated populace isn't better than an uneducated populace why bother with education? It costs a lot and ties up a portion of your potential work force with what would be a useless waste of time. I think you are conflating the inherent value of a human life vs. the relative value of different things we can do as people to improve ourselves. Education "improves" people, it makes them better. Having proper garbage disposal improves countries (groups of people). This is why we value and promote these things. And following you to circle back to the original point... Raising the price of plastics for everyone does place the majority of the burden on poor people/countries. If everything costs $0.05 more due to more expensive packaging, that is statistical noise for most people in a 1st world country but would make things unaffordable in poorer countries. But I agree that the only way to do it successfully would be to force a higher cost on the manufacturers no matter where they are located, otherwise they'd just shift manufacturing to the lower cost areas. Pretty much anything that raises the cost of goods will disproportionately impact the poor.
- lurking_swe 2y ago
  i meant “better” from a moral perspective. This hypothetical person in the Philippines likely doesn’t realize their impact on the environment - and it’s not their fault that trash collection infrastructure is lacking either. If we grew up in that environment we’d probably behave the same way! If all you ever knew was your friends, neighbors, and role models littering. Hope that clarifies my perspective.
  - gosub100 2y ago
    That's a highly patronizing view that because someone is from the Philippines they are incapable of knowing the impact of littering. They have the same access to information we do, don't they?
    - lurking_swe 2y ago
      it’s a generalized statement. Obviously a curious person can read and learn as much as they want on the internet. did you read hacker news before you became a nerd (like myself)? probably not. I didn’t even know it existed! Why? Because nobody told me about it and my social circle growing up was mainly into video games and reading books. I only heard about it after i branched out in college and studied computer science, and eventually got my first job in tech. A colleague recommended it to me. Nobody is going to randomly search “how to properly dispose of trash” lol. People typically get into an echo chamber so to speak, limited by their social circle. If nobody else around you cares about trash disposal growing up, what are the chances you will randomly show an interest in that? Very slim IMO. ESPECIALLY if the main thing on their mind is putting food on the table for their family. Worrying about garbage disposal best practices is a LUXURY not every society has and i think you forget that. I’m not criticizing individual people at all here.

potato3732842 2y ago

How is it racist? He just picked a random landlocked first place area and a oceanfront 3rd world place? He could have just as easily chosen South Korea and Brazil or whatever other comparison. I will agree that littering is very much cultural.

eikenberry 2y ago

If an educated populace isn't better than an uneducated populace why bother with education? It costs a lot and ties up a portion of your potential work force with what would be a useless waste of time. I think you are conflating the inherent value of a human life vs. the relative value of different things we can do as people to improve ourselves. Education "improves" people, it makes them better. Having proper garbage disposal improves countries (groups of people). This is why we value and promote these things. And following you to circle back to the original point... Raising the price of plastics for everyone does place the majority of the burden on poor people/countries. If everything costs $0.05 more due to more expensive packaging, that is statistical noise for most people in a 1st world country but would make things unaffordable in poorer countries. But I agree that the only way to do it successfully would be to force a higher cost on the manufacturers no matter where they are located, otherwise they'd just shift manufacturing to the lower cost areas. Pretty much anything that raises the cost of goods will disproportionately impact the poor.

lurking_swe 2y ago
i meant “better” from a moral perspective. This hypothetical person in the Philippines likely doesn’t realize their impact on the environment - and it’s not their fault that trash collection infrastructure is lacking either. If we grew up in that environment we’d probably behave the same way! If all you ever knew was your friends, neighbors, and role models littering. Hope that clarifies my perspective.
- gosub100 2y ago
  That's a highly patronizing view that because someone is from the Philippines they are incapable of knowing the impact of littering. They have the same access to information we do, don't they?
  - lurking_swe 2y ago
    it’s a generalized statement. Obviously a curious person can read and learn as much as they want on the internet. did you read hacker news before you became a nerd (like myself)? probably not. I didn’t even know it existed! Why? Because nobody told me about it and my social circle growing up was mainly into video games and reading books. I only heard about it after i branched out in college and studied computer science, and eventually got my first job in tech. A colleague recommended it to me. Nobody is going to randomly search “how to properly dispose of trash” lol. People typically get into an echo chamber so to speak, limited by their social circle. If nobody else around you cares about trash disposal growing up, what are the chances you will randomly show an interest in that? Very slim IMO. ESPECIALLY if the main thing on their mind is putting food on the table for their family. Worrying about garbage disposal best practices is a LUXURY not every society has and i think you forget that. I’m not criticizing individual people at all here.