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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Product manufacturers should have to bear the cost of disposing the products/packaging they ship. It would be great if every product came stamped with some manufacturer ID code or something, and when you throw it away, the waste management company eventually scans it all and each manufacturer got billed based on material/weight/etc.

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Manufacturers would just transfers to the consumer. We have a CRV tax for each bottle/can here in California, and as far as I can tell, it has no affect on consumer behavior.

Here it's become a cottage industry for the homeless to go around collecting and turning in materials.

>Manufacturers would just transfers to the consumer

As opposed to not transferring the cost when they're forced to use glass bottles or whatever? Plastic is used because it's cheap. Switching to alternatives would undoubtedly cost more money.

>We have a CRV tax for each bottle/can here in California, and as far as I can tell, it has no affect on consumer behavior.

Maybe this says something about the effectiveness of plastic bottles? If consumers/companies are still choosing plastic bottles even though they have to pay the disposal costs, maybe this means that plastic bottles are better as a whole and we shouldn't be trying to force a switch to alternatives?

CRV doesn't work as well because it's not on the (literal) sticker price, so it gets appended after the consumer has already made a buying decision in most cases.

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