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> about 50 cents a pound which makes it hard for any kind of recycling process to be competitive. We've had almost a century of subsidization of the oil indust

by culi 2y ago

> about 50 cents a pound which makes it hard for any kind of recycling process to be competitive. We've had almost a century of subsidization of the oil industry. The gov't needs to play a bigger similar role if the recycling industry is ever gonna be able to compete We need a tax on the full lifecycle cost of plastics so we can stop treating waste as an economic externality

PaulHoule 2y ago
Landfilling plastics on the other costs about 4 cents a pound. The nightmare scenario about plastics is not that they get landfilled but that people chuck them on the ground and they find their way to the ocean and get ground up into microplastics.
- Gigachad 2y ago
  Or that they just shed microplastics during their lifetime. Car tires and clothing being a huge source. It would be cheaper to just ban stuff like polyester fleece than to try to clean it up after.
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    Or we could price cleanup and recycling of the constituent materials into the purchase price by requiring manufacturers to pay to recycle all the items they manufacture. This approach closes the loop in a way which encourages manufacturers to re-engineer their products to be less expensive to recycle.
    - Gigachad 2y ago
      Cleanup is impossible though. How are you going to clean up a trillion nanoplastic dust particles? What is the effective difference between phasing out fleece clothing vs charging $100M for a jacket?
      - timschmidt 2y ago
        One includes freedom and creates an economic incentive for the development of environmental rehabilitation, recycling, and carbon negative technologies. If some celebrity wants to single-handedly fund the development of a microplastics recovery technology as part of a red carpet fashion item, I'm OK with that.
        Gigachad 2y ago
        The problem with this is it doesn't give any consideration to the feasibility of alternatives or timelines to change things. If you just drop a blanket "every product must include it's cleanup costs", you're telling the public that their current life essentials are now unbelievably expensive. Vs selectively picking products which have easy alternatives and providing phase out periods which match the difficulty of replacing them. If you tell the public you are going to make car tires cost millions of dollars, you'll be voted out. If you tell them that plastic confetti will be replaced with paper confetti in 12 months you'll make real progress. This doesn't prevent innovation. Scientists will still do research, develop new recycling tech and processes.
        timschmidt 2y ago
        The trouble is that the market allocation of funding is dependent on the valuation of goods and services. Until the externalized costs are accurately represented, the market will under-allocate capital toward solving the problem. To push the transition to happen faster without internalizing costs, you'd have to subsidize development with significantly more cash than the market would be willing to allocate with accurately internalized costs. Which I'm not sure is possible. There are definitely reasons to subsidize some products - medical devices, for instance - as you say, things without readily available alternatives. I'm not writing a detailed transition plan here, just pointing out observations.
      - culi 2y ago
        If $100M is what it would cost to internalize the economic externalities of fleece then that is the true fair price of the item. Anything less than that is a subsidy We are subsidizing these materials with our health and our environment. And it affects certain people more than others—usually people who have the least say in it A 100% linen shirt currently costs around $40 and, when cared for properly, can last a lifetime. Rubber bands made out of natural rubber are much stronger and will last at least 10x as long as plastic ones and are about the same price. I could go on, but the alternatives exist and are already often much cheaper in the long run.

by culi 2y ago

PaulHoule 2y ago

Landfilling plastics on the other costs about 4 cents a pound. The nightmare scenario about plastics is not that they get landfilled but that people chuck them on the ground and they find their way to the ocean and get ground up into microplastics.

Gigachad 2y ago
Or that they just shed microplastics during their lifetime. Car tires and clothing being a huge source. It would be cheaper to just ban stuff like polyester fleece than to try to clean it up after.
- timschmidt 2y ago
  Or we could price cleanup and recycling of the constituent materials into the purchase price by requiring manufacturers to pay to recycle all the items they manufacture. This approach closes the loop in a way which encourages manufacturers to re-engineer their products to be less expensive to recycle.
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    Cleanup is impossible though. How are you going to clean up a trillion nanoplastic dust particles? What is the effective difference between phasing out fleece clothing vs charging $100M for a jacket?
    - timschmidt 2y ago
      One includes freedom and creates an economic incentive for the development of environmental rehabilitation, recycling, and carbon negative technologies. If some celebrity wants to single-handedly fund the development of a microplastics recovery technology as part of a red carpet fashion item, I'm OK with that.
      - Gigachad 2y ago
        The problem with this is it doesn't give any consideration to the feasibility of alternatives or timelines to change things. If you just drop a blanket "every product must include it's cleanup costs", you're telling the public that their current life essentials are now unbelievably expensive. Vs selectively picking products which have easy alternatives and providing phase out periods which match the difficulty of replacing them. If you tell the public you are going to make car tires cost millions of dollars, you'll be voted out. If you tell them that plastic confetti will be replaced with paper confetti in 12 months you'll make real progress. This doesn't prevent innovation. Scientists will still do research, develop new recycling tech and processes.
        timschmidt 2y ago
        The trouble is that the market allocation of funding is dependent on the valuation of goods and services. Until the externalized costs are accurately represented, the market will under-allocate capital toward solving the problem. To push the transition to happen faster without internalizing costs, you'd have to subsidize development with significantly more cash than the market would be willing to allocate with accurately internalized costs. Which I'm not sure is possible. There are definitely reasons to subsidize some products - medical devices, for instance - as you say, things without readily available alternatives. I'm not writing a detailed transition plan here, just pointing out observations.
    - culi 2y ago
      If $100M is what it would cost to internalize the economic externalities of fleece then that is the true fair price of the item. Anything less than that is a subsidy We are subsidizing these materials with our health and our environment. And it affects certain people more than others—usually people who have the least say in it A 100% linen shirt currently costs around $40 and, when cared for properly, can last a lifetime. Rubber bands made out of natural rubber are much stronger and will last at least 10x as long as plastic ones and are about the same price. I could go on, but the alternatives exist and are already often much cheaper in the long run.