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Relative rankings serve more as PR tools for the brands themselves than anything else. Pollution matters in absolute numbers. It's only fair the company that sells the most plastic to also be held accountable for the most plastic waste.

E.g. Coca-Cola could claim to have reduced their use in plastic in 25% and still be the most polluting brand.

> It's only fair the company that sells the most plastic to also be held accountable for the most plastic waste.

What would you suggest they do to reduce the amount of waste?

If the products are sold in plastic bottles, there are severe limits to what the control the company has once the product is in the hands of the consumers.

If we're talking about government regulations, why is that company to be held accountable for those regulations?

They can sell in non-plastic packaging. They can invest in research of biodegradable packaging. They can collect the packaging.

There's a lot a company can do.

There’s some questions you have to ask about potential courses of action. Because what a company can do is restricted to what it is economically viable for them to do. Actions that are not economically viable would put them out of business. They would make their product go up in cost to a large enough degree that people wouldn’t purchase their products. And you can’t just wave this issue away by pointing out that the company is very wealthy.

So we have to ask whether it is economically viable to, say, collect the packaging. I imagine that country-wide programs to do this would be very expensive.

Of the ones you mention, I imagine that research is the most likely to be viable (keep in mind it’s not just the research but also finding a material that is economically viable to produce) But how do you know they aren’t already doing that?

I do know Coca-Cola was lobbying against mandatory returning of bottles against deposit in my country (Slovakia). It was already implemented in the 90s and no major increase of cost happened, but they didn't like it anyway. It's just usual corporate penny-pinching (and in your case, probably FUD).

In Germany collection of bottles has been implemented all the time and it is definitely not "very expensive". In Slovakia it is planned to start again since next year or so.

We were talking about the company selling the products being responsible for collecting the products, not for whether there were voluntary collection schemes.

No, about what the company was accountable for.

The quote in question that I was responding to was “They [Coca-Cola] can collect the packaging.”

What is "mandatory returning of bottles against deposit"?

https://www.greenmax-machine.com/Deposit-Collection-System-I...

If not selling in plastic bottles puts them out of the business, their business only survives externalising costs (= leaving plastic waste to someone else to figure out), and they should be out of business.

In the 80's and 90's, where I live, Coca-Cola used to sell in returnable glass bottles, you would drop it at the mini market and buy a filled one, and buying one without returning another bottle cost a lot more, so people had incentive to store empty bottles and return it back. It worked just fine. They didn't go broke. I call BS that it's not economic viable.

I think it's a problem to always point at consumers behavior regarding waste. It's shifting the blame. Why are the companies selling their products not accountable for the lifetime of their products? Coca-Cola would have to spend money de-cluttering beaches, oceans, etc. or maybe spend in R&D to find alternatives. Probably the price of a bottle of Coke would increase. Big deal.

> Why are the companies selling their products not accountable for the lifetime of their products?

This gets back to my original point: why are they to blame for it? I'm willing to hear an argument for why they are, but neither the original article nor your comment provides one.

As far as I understand things, the majority of plastic pollution comes from poor waste management practices. With good waste management practices, there aren't any issues with plastic pollution. If this is true, then why should the companies who make the products be at fault? The waste management practices are the responsibility of parties such as governments.

> The waste management practices are the responsibility of parties such as governments.

Coca-Cola manufactures billions of plastic bottles a year. Governments don't create waste. If you think waste management would solve it, why isn't Coca-Cola contributing to waste management? This is a direct government subsidy. Our taxes are funding waste management services for a problem that Coca-Cola and others create.

I don't drink Coca-Cola, yet my taxes pay for waste management services and litter pick-up operations from my city council. It would be more fair if that price was shifted to the company.

This entire thread hinges on the issue of, Why is the company producing the product responsible for that product ending up as pollution? I pointed out that the initial article did not provide any arguments for why the company should be held responsible. They just assumed it. And all of your comments just assume it.

I've explained why it doesn't seem that way to me. Give me a reason and then we can discuss that reason.

> why isn't Coca-Cola contributing to waste management?

What is the reason that they should?

> a problem that Coca-Cola and others create.

What is the argument for that company creating the problem? You haven't addressed what I've said regarding this.

> It would be more fair if that price was shifted to the company.

Why?

You also seem to be implying that good waste management practices are somehow only needed because of there being so much plastic. We need good practices whether or not Coca-Cola exists.

You seem to be searching for an empiracle argument that is devoid of all context and I’m not sure you’re going to get it.

Simply look at the situation and see if it passes a basic common sense test:

Coke produces billions of plastic bottles, many of which end up as pollution.

Coke produces billions of dollars of profits, none of which goes to preventing those plastic bottles from ending up as waste.

Coke’s company operators and shareholders make billions of dollars, of which none (or a negligible amount) of which goes to preventing said waste.

We all live in a world that is littered with plastic waste, which causes health problems and other horrible ecological problems, even if we don’t buy coke products.

Coke is directly responsible for creating a huge amount of this waste. They are not the only producer but they are the biggest and the biggest ones get held accountable for things. This is the way of the world in which human beings make emotionally bisased decisions.

Does this sound fair to you?

I've already addressed that -- as I said in one of the ancestor comments to this one,

"As far as I understand things, the majority of plastic pollution comes from poor waste management practices. With good waste management practices, there aren't any issues with plastic pollution. If this is true, then why should the companies who make the products be at fault? The waste management practices are the responsibility of parties such as governments."

To clarify that a bit, my understanding is that it comes from those countries that have poor waste management practices, and that many countries already have reasonably good practices. I also saw an article recently claiming that the majority of ocean waste comes from ships disposing of their waste at sea. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21135259

> why are they to blame for it?

Because they are manufacturing it.

That is a very weak argument, because it's not providing any explanation of why. It's just asserting that the reason is X, and this is very easy to do:

Why are they to blame for diabetes? Because they are manufacturing the product.

Why are they to blame for tooth decay? Because they are manufacturing the product.

Why are car makers to blame for road deaths? Because they make the cars.

etc etc.

It's so easy to trot out such near-slogans.

I am NOT saying you can't make an argument for these parties to having the blame, however such simple "because they make it" doesn't cut it.

It requres a more substantial argument.

The blame should really be placed on the consumers of coca cola - the consumers are ultimately responsible for this waste. Consumers should probably be taxed for buying high-poullution products. These externalities need to be represented somehow in the market place, but they aren't so consumers will just keep buying shit because they can afford it!

You need organizations to solve the pollution problem in big scale.

Governments and companies are both organizations taxing the world in different ways and giving services in return.

The only real choice we have is to give our money and positive/negative attention to these organizations irrespective if they are governments or companies, so I would ask why not make both types of organizations responsible?

> The only real choice we have is to give our money and positive/negative attention to these organizations irrespective if they are governments or companies, so I would ask why not make both types of organizations responsible?

What has that got to do with my point?

You wroye this:

,,What about the government policies regarding recycling or waste management? Or consumer behavior regarding waste?''

The problem with consumer behaviour change is that it doesn't scale. There are billions of people who pollute much less than an averahe person living in US, but they are unable to offset it

Blaming doesn't need much effort, so even though it has less direct effect, it can scale better through social media.

Regarding government policies (and especially enforcement) you are totally right though.

Saying that a party is to “blame” (or “is responsible”) for something, and “make them responsible” for something — these do not mean the same thing. They have quite different meanings.