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Survey finds that 60 firms are responsible for half of world’s plastic pollution
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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That's what's always a bit maddening about these conversations. It's not like companies are just shredding plastic into the atmosphere because they're cartoon villains who love evil.
They're making cheap plastic shit because we love cheap plastic shit. They're making this stuff in response to explicit consumer prioritization of low costs above all other factors. If consumers broadly demanded soda in glass bottles and expressed a willingness to pay the extra cost that this entails, every soda company would use glass.
I'm not saying that you individually should be blamed for all environmental pollution, but we have to realize that companies are responding to the exact same incentives that we do. They're obviously operating at a much larger scale, but they use cheap plastic shit for the exact same reason we do. If you're looking for policy solutions, a great option would be to introduce an externality tax on plastic so that this environmental cost is actually factored into the production and end price and can fund remediate the damage, similar to carbon taxes. Of course though, the moment you say the word 'tax' people's brains completely shut off, so this is probably a non-starter.
I don’t think consumers in general have a direct say in the matter though, regardless of their impact. Blaming every individual for it is inefficient, and ultimately is only useful for deferring blame when you don’t want to solve the actual problem.
If you are interested in an actual solution you go to the source, and regulate the corporations.
Regulation is fine, but people need to realize that there are always downstream effects that often result in a less efficient version of the same outcome.
For instance, say you just pass a blanket ban on plastic soda bottles and mandate glass. Production costs immediately go up (not to mention transportation and logistics), and those costs are naturally passed onto the consumer, so the prices of all sodas go up.
Has this really improved things? There are real questions about the environment impact of glass, since they're significantly heavier and thus require more carbon emissions to transport. Glass is better if it's reused, but there are situations where it's unlikely to be reused. Soda is now more expensive, just as it would have been under a plastic tax (and because lower income people tend to drink more soda, you've hit them extra hard relatively), but now you've also eliminated the ability for plastic bottles to be used in situations where they truly are called for; for instance, you probably don't want to be selling glass bottles at a music festival, so an organizer will need to instead purchase extra plastic cups instead, resulting in the consumption of extra glass and plastic.
I know people have this idea that the only factor that goes into a price is how greedy the CEO happens to feel that morning, but that's simply not the case. Prices are set by market circumstances, not greed. It's not like NYC landlords suddenly got less greedy in 2020; the market radically changed. They're already charging the most that the market will bear. In terms of regulation, it's almost always more effective to go after the market incentives - that is, price signals - instead of just taking a hammer to the thing you don't like and hoping it doesn't have any bad effects.
Ok, but i was taught as a child about the need to recycle. What percent of the population recycles? What percent even have access to recycle programs? What percent of recycle programs don’t just throw the bags into the normal trash dumps?
You say cost will go up if actual change is introduced and consumers will be upset. I agree, but the opinions and the cost are not being considered. Should they be? And if they make it untenable, what does that say about the product?
You frame this as a ‘there is no solution i can see that’s worth it so why bother’ and this tells me you are not interested in a solution. There are solutions out there right now we could be doing but don’t. And some progress is better then nothing. Not to mention drinking from plastic bottles has apparently been poisoning us.
As for housing, they are charging the most the market can bear…. After the land lords manipulated the housing market so that the market could be forced into bearing more than it could healthily. Again because they are not properly regulated.
That is the exact opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying that an externality tax to capture the actual cost of single-use plastics would do a lot to reduce their use without distorting markets and causing unintended side effects while likely being more effective than blanket bans.
That and an indulgence tax does not solve the problem. The intention is not to get more money from taxes, or to lower the pores access to normal goods, it’s decentivise its use. And by definition the amount you would have to tax to achieve this has to be so much that it destabilizes the market. Thats the point.
Okay, so imagine you just ban plastic soda bottles. Now plastic bottles cannot be used in any circumstances, no matter how genuinely warranted, even if a user is willing to pay all costs to ensure its environmental impacts are offset. Also, all soda is now significantly more expensive, so "the poors" still have less access to it.
Potentially, yes. The entire point is that these artificial low prices are only possible because the negative externalities are being inflicted on other people in the form of pollution. By actually factoring this impact into the cost of the good, its true cost emerges and the market will settle into whatever the equilibrium is. If the only thing enabling mass access to cheap soda is a ton of pollution, then you either accept mass pollution or you lose the mass access to cheap soda. There's not really any way around that fundamental trade-off.
Not potentially, the market MUST be disruputed. If the market is not disrupted, the same goods are being bought, if the same goods are being bought then the same trash is created. Upsetting the market is the whole point.
Putting an indulgence tax on plastic may help stop the poor from contributing to the pollution problem, but unless the cost is prohibitively expensive for the majority it’s not going to work. Also you are not factoring that the use of the plastic can be how it’s regulated. I do not envision it being outright banned from all applications. Just all the single use applications. And i would also posit that some single use applications could be changed to a reusable use without reforging the container. It is being done else where and soon we won’t have a choice but to comply anyway. We are just talking about how dystopian that time will be at this point.
So, you want to regulate the use of plastic via an indulgence tax. But instead of charging the corporation, you want to add an additional tax to every single individual transaction? Or do you want to tax the corporation once and have the cost of the product go up. The end result is the same, except one is more efficient.
The spot where you charge it really doesn't matter much except to the accountants; it'll always just be factored into the price of the product. There's no real difference between the company increasing the price by ten cents or a ten cent tax being levied at the register.
I really wouldn't call it an indulgence tax though. There are plenty of uses for single-use plastics that aren't sodas or indulgences.
That and an indulgence tax does not solve the problem. The intention is not to get more money from taxes, or to lower the pores access to normal goods, it’s decentivise its use. And by definition the amount you would have to tax to achieve this has to be so much that it destabilizes the market. Thats the point.
No. They're making cheap plastic shit because their constant lobbying against common sense regulation and a living wage means that the cheap plastic shit is all most of us can afford.
Also known as a consumer prioritization of being able to survive without being TOO crushed by debt. You're really slathering the victim blaming on thick.
Bullshit. You have the power relationship backwards. The vast majority of humanity can't afford high quality sustainable packaging because the premium companies demand for it is ridiculous. Because they know they can as long as useful fools blame the consumers.
Sounds awfully close to just that, though.
They absolutely are not. A company has the option to make the packaging better at the same price in exchange for a couple cents less profit per bottle. A customer, who already doesn't have the vast resources with which to choose that a company has, would have to pay several times that, often several dollars, extra to get the "premium" glass bottle.
That's like saying that the Sultan of Brunei's palace is obviously much larger than my apartment: while technically true, the difference of scale is so vast that any direct comparison is effectively meaningless.
Nope. They produce cheap plastic shit to maximize profits because they're allowed to. We buy cheap plastic shit to minimize costs because we have to. Those are not the same reason.
Yes! This better be good..
Companies would just pass the cost on to consumers as always. If you do that AND price control, then we have something!
Another example of something that's a great idea in theory but end up not working as intended because it's too easy for big companies to avoid the intended consequences. Carbon taxes with no transferrable carbon credits and the aforementioned price control could work, though.
Taxes work. You just need additional mechanisms too, to prevent the kind of fuckery companies get up to.
In no universe is coca cola "all you can afford". You could replace it with tap water and be better off in every way.
Yeah because there's nothing physically, mentally and even socially addictive about the number one brand in the world, packed with sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and/or questionable sweeteners 🙄
Next you're gonna share the brilliant insight that it's cheaper to not smoke tobacco..
Are you suggesting people should not be encouraged to quit smoking?
No, I'm saying that it's not that simple to just forgo something addictive.
I'm an ex smoker (and ex drinker) myself, so while I would never recommend smoking (or drinking to excess), I have very little patience for people assuming or implying that addictions are easily kicked.
That shit can control significant parts of your whole life, sometimes in subtle ways you weren't even aware of.
So, you agree people should not start drinking Coca Cola, and for their own health and finances they should make every effort to stop drinking Coca Cola.
Yeah, but it isn't that simple, is what I'm saying.
You're pretending that it's a completely unencumbered choice. That there's no social and societal pressures making lifelong coca cola abstinence viewed as evidence of being in a cult or mentally unwell.
Likewise, addictions fight you hard when you try to get rid of them, much harder than anyone who's never been addicted can even imagine.
Fact is that it's NOT an unencumbered choice at all, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.