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Comment by p3llin0r3 | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, this probably wouldn't work.

Most plastic waste does not come from rich countries with decent waste infrastructure. It comes from shipping and fishing and industrial vessels who dump their garbage into the ocean, and developing countries who dispose of all of their waste by throwing it into a river or the ocean to be washed away.

You can't tax them because they are not in your country. You would have to stop the plastic being created at it's source, and prevent it from ever being released into the environment.

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I don't know why you're being down voted. China, India and Africa are responsible for 90% of the waste in the ocean. All of them are smaller consumers of it than the US. (https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/891361/Plastic-waste-po...)

I can't stand these various doomsday scenario stories. Yes, it's certainly wasteful to have single use plastic products. Consumers like them, though, and they're sometimes the only way to comply with various regulations about cleanliness. For example, washing and steam cleaning glass to sterilize it uses more energy than just making a plastic bottle.

Right, but if your energy comes from renewables, then this calculus changes.

> For example, washing and steam cleaning glass to sterilize it uses more energy than just making a plastic bottle.

OK but washing and cleaning is the whole consumer life cycle of glass. How does it compare to both making and "recycling" the plastic bottle?

Did you read the original article? Where do you think a lot of the waste from China comes from (hint - we send it there). A lot of the plastic 'recyclable' waste we ship there can't actually be recycled (clam shell containers, contaminated plastic), and ends up as part of the waste stream.

> You would have to stop the plastic being created at it's source, and prevent it from ever being released into the environment.

Then let's do that! Sure, you can't police a fishing trawler or some guy in a Third World country throwing plastic bottles into the water, but petroleum production and refining are very big, visible, highly centralized industries. It would be entirely feasible and desirable to put a hefty tax on the production of plastic.

And basic economic theory says that's the most efficient way to do it: apply a tax to cover the negative externalities, and let the market figure out how to optimize from there.

Should we ignore the escalating amounts of waste, mainly from single use packaging, in the developed world meanwhile?

The developing world has their own problems - how is a developing country going to deal with these problems without first getting the infrastructure needed? Let's focus on our wasteful selves - we're the one's who've been benefited from the consumption of cheap, throwaway products.

Taxing the usage of plastic will reduce it's use because it kills the market and reduces.

Just like GDPR killing off companies that could only exist where reasonable regulations didn't exist, the same would apply of plastic.

If taxing plastic in US/EU creates alternative packaging/disposable options that are cheaper or more effective (doubtful but possible) then the developing world can leapfrom from plastics to non-plastic.

Also you're ignoring all the waste that's not ocean-dumped. The billions of tons in landfills.

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