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Comment by throwway120385 | Hacker News Reader

throwway120385·

I think a lot of things would get fixed if we simply required the originators of the material or item to pay for its recycling or disposal. If it's not economical to recycle an item, the cost would be borne by the organization that made the item.

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100%! You see a lot of reusing of resources when it suits the businesses. Shipping containers, pallets, kegs & gas bottles are all standardized and get recycled for many years. By recycled I mean the literal meaning before it got molested by corporate propaganda campaigns. I suspect if the manufacturers were forced to pay for the externalized costs of plastic junk they might start:

* making their own durable packaging to buy back.

* figure out how to standardize package shapes and centralize collection/washing.

* Stop overpackaging and over marketing the food. A lot of foods don't need to come in a shiny colorful plastic packet.

The big problems (which I know of) are that defining 'originator' is actually a bit tricky, and that the 'originator' is often somewhere very far from the end-user, and has very little ability to take any part in recycling or disposal.

"Very little ability" is just another phrase for "doesn't want to spend the money."

If a small-medium sized company exports a product, it's very difficult to get involved in recycling/disposal, and there are a lot of small-medium sized companies exporting. Not everyone has a subsidiary in every province of every country, and shipping all used products back to HQ is probably more carbon-intensive than just throwing stuff in a landfill.

But you can solve this systematically by just having that medium sized company pay for it. They don't have to do it; but they have to pay for it; meaning the cost will be transferred along to the end user.

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