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Go further. Every product must be returned to manufacturer at end of life. Any items found by garbage program will be collected and returned to manufacturer at

Go further. Every product must be returned to manufacturer at end of life. Any items found by garbage program will be collected and returned to manufacturer at cost. All items sold in country must be identifiable for this purpose. Importers are considered the manufacturers and must retrofit products. Then we would be getting closer to capturing the total burden to society.

irishcoffee 9mo ago
The amount of completely useless plastic garbage that we would be sending back east would be mind-numbing. They don’t have anywhere to put that trash either.
- teiferer 9mo ago
  So maybe if you make the cost high enough (which is currently just externalized) then they might start disappearing by not being produced in the first place by lack of demand. People don't buy this because it's crap. They buy it because it's cheap.
  - irishcoffee 9mo ago
    > People don't buy this because it's crap. They buy it because it's cheap. This is an interesting thread to pull on. Why is it so inexpensive for the east to make plastic garbage and sell it to the world?
    - pyrolistical 9mo ago
      1. Plastic is cheap 2. Importers of cheap plastic crap are not on the hook of the eventual disposal. So the cost isn’t seen by the consumer at point of purchase but instead indirectly seen in increased taxes for garbage disposal
lend000 9mo ago
I don't hate the idea. But if you think it through, it's intractable. You need to 2x+ the transportation cost of all products (it will cost more to get them back for multiple reasons, including products not being as neatly packaged and often going from many-to-one transportation to many-to-many). Companies also need to double their specializations and adopt recycling processes that will largely be redundant with other companies; you basically make it impossible for small companies to make complicated products. And are we including food products, the majority of trash? It makes a lot more sense to centralize waste repurposing and benefit from economies of scale. Waste management is already a very profitable industry. Of course, it's wasteful, just burying stuff, and environmentally harmful. But I'm of the opinion that it will soon be economically viable to start mining landfills for different types of enriched materials, and government subsidies could bridge the gap for things that are of greater public interest to recycle. I've been working on the software side of the technology needed to do this in my spare time for a couple years, waiting for some hardware advancements.
- tomcam 9mo ago
  > You need to 2x+ the transportation cost of all products... Companies also need to double their specializations and adopt recycling processes that will largely be redundant with other companies I think 3rd parties would spring up to deal with that stuff
  - __d 9mo ago
    Agreed. Companies could “outsource” their recycling obligations to local (national, regional, whatever) providers.
    - CableNinja 9mo ago
      That was tried, and what ultimately occured was disgusting. The world was full of new computers popping up and every middle class or above person buying new ones like they do with iphones now. Companies started recycling programs, and many immediately went the route of corruption. They would pack up shipping containers full of ewaste, with 40-50% reusable items, and the rest junk, allowing them to skirt the rules. These containers would end up in 3rd world countries, with people standing over a burning pile of ewaste, filtering out reusable metals. There was, at one point, even images of children doing this work. The usable items were sold dirt cheap, with no data erasing, leading to large amounts of data theft, and being able to buy pages of active credit card numbers for a dollar. We are talking about less critical things now, like vape pens, but its not a far throw for it to instantly become an actually bad idea to let other companies do the recycling. Make the manufacturer deal with it, or even the city/state, via public intake locations (like was mentioned of switzerland in another part of this thread)
kube-system 9mo ago
> Go further. Every product must be returned to manufacturer at end of life. Well that Charmin bear will certainly have his work cut out for him
nottorp 9mo ago
You're thinking disposable vapes, but this will apply to quality of life appliances like washing machines as well, right? Do you want to live in a world where only the rich can afford washing machines? Incidentally, I don't know what you do, but once in a while I throw (carefully, li-ion batteries) my broken electronics in the trunk and bring them to the local collection center.
- ajb 9mo ago
  The EU and UK already require sellers to recycle electronics, and we can still afford washing machines. Here is Amazon's page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GZ8UKWT6JBYRDJJA https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeI...
  - nottorp 9mo ago
    Heh. I am in the EU. For washing machines specifically, I get a tiny discount when I buy a new one for having them pick up the old one for recycling. Possibly for freezers too, but for some reason my washers break but the freezer doesn't. Not all stores do that though, if I buy from one that doesn't I can call my local recycling center and they'll eventually get around to picking up the old appliance from your home. However, this is not done by the manufacturer or importer, as the OP suggested. There are separate organizations and it's paid for via a tax on new device purchases. Which means a new washing machine manufacturer doesn't need to worry about having their own recycling infrastructure. And I move that the recycling tax I pay for national level recycling adds less to the price than $NEW_COMPANY building their own, just for their models.
    - WesolyKubeczek 9mo ago
      > for some reason my washers break but the freezer doesn't. The properties of your running water and the presence of very much moving parts in the former?
      - nottorp 9mo ago

irishcoffee 9mo ago

The amount of completely useless plastic garbage that we would be sending back east would be mind-numbing. They don’t have anywhere to put that trash either.

teiferer 9mo ago
So maybe if you make the cost high enough (which is currently just externalized) then they might start disappearing by not being produced in the first place by lack of demand. People don't buy this because it's crap. They buy it because it's cheap.
- irishcoffee 9mo ago
  > People don't buy this because it's crap. They buy it because it's cheap. This is an interesting thread to pull on. Why is it so inexpensive for the east to make plastic garbage and sell it to the world?
  - pyrolistical 9mo ago
    1. Plastic is cheap 2. Importers of cheap plastic crap are not on the hook of the eventual disposal. So the cost isn’t seen by the consumer at point of purchase but instead indirectly seen in increased taxes for garbage disposal

lend000 9mo ago

I don't hate the idea. But if you think it through, it's intractable. You need to 2x+ the transportation cost of all products (it will cost more to get them back for multiple reasons, including products not being as neatly packaged and often going from many-to-one transportation to many-to-many). Companies also need to double their specializations and adopt recycling processes that will largely be redundant with other companies; you basically make it impossible for small companies to make complicated products. And are we including food products, the majority of trash? It makes a lot more sense to centralize waste repurposing and benefit from economies of scale. Waste management is already a very profitable industry. Of course, it's wasteful, just burying stuff, and environmentally harmful. But I'm of the opinion that it will soon be economically viable to start mining landfills for different types of enriched materials, and government subsidies could bridge the gap for things that are of greater public interest to recycle. I've been working on the software side of the technology needed to do this in my spare time for a couple years, waiting for some hardware advancements.

tomcam 9mo ago
> You need to 2x+ the transportation cost of all products... Companies also need to double their specializations and adopt recycling processes that will largely be redundant with other companies I think 3rd parties would spring up to deal with that stuff
- __d 9mo ago
  Agreed. Companies could “outsource” their recycling obligations to local (national, regional, whatever) providers.
  - CableNinja 9mo ago
    That was tried, and what ultimately occured was disgusting. The world was full of new computers popping up and every middle class or above person buying new ones like they do with iphones now. Companies started recycling programs, and many immediately went the route of corruption. They would pack up shipping containers full of ewaste, with 40-50% reusable items, and the rest junk, allowing them to skirt the rules. These containers would end up in 3rd world countries, with people standing over a burning pile of ewaste, filtering out reusable metals. There was, at one point, even images of children doing this work. The usable items were sold dirt cheap, with no data erasing, leading to large amounts of data theft, and being able to buy pages of active credit card numbers for a dollar. We are talking about less critical things now, like vape pens, but its not a far throw for it to instantly become an actually bad idea to let other companies do the recycling. Make the manufacturer deal with it, or even the city/state, via public intake locations (like was mentioned of switzerland in another part of this thread)

kube-system 9mo ago

> Go further. Every product must be returned to manufacturer at end of life. Well that Charmin bear will certainly have his work cut out for him

nottorp 9mo ago

You're thinking disposable vapes, but this will apply to quality of life appliances like washing machines as well, right? Do you want to live in a world where only the rich can afford washing machines? Incidentally, I don't know what you do, but once in a while I throw (carefully, li-ion batteries) my broken electronics in the trunk and bring them to the local collection center.

ajb 9mo ago
The EU and UK already require sellers to recycle electronics, and we can still afford washing machines. Here is Amazon's page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GZ8UKWT6JBYRDJJA https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeI...
- nottorp 9mo ago
  Heh. I am in the EU. For washing machines specifically, I get a tiny discount when I buy a new one for having them pick up the old one for recycling. Possibly for freezers too, but for some reason my washers break but the freezer doesn't. Not all stores do that though, if I buy from one that doesn't I can call my local recycling center and they'll eventually get around to picking up the old appliance from your home. However, this is not done by the manufacturer or importer, as the OP suggested. There are separate organizations and it's paid for via a tax on new device purchases. Which means a new washing machine manufacturer doesn't need to worry about having their own recycling infrastructure. And I move that the recycling tax I pay for national level recycling adds less to the price than $NEW_COMPANY building their own, just for their models.
  - WesolyKubeczek 9mo ago
    > for some reason my washers break but the freezer doesn't. The properties of your running water and the presence of very much moving parts in the former?
    - nottorp 9mo ago