It would just mean that manufacturers were expected to account for the entire lifecycle of their product. Currently you can flood the world with cheap, disposable junk, profit handsomely, and leave everyone else with the waste disposal problem. If use of new plastics vs recycled plastic were penalized or taxed it could have this effect, as a result of a more rigidly regulated civilization, rather than a collapse.

Why manufacturers? If waste disposal had to be paid for, people would start adjusting the retail price by adding the disposal price.

Not sure where you live but in my town I pay 7€ per bin container (approx 50l) for non-recyclable waste but the recyclable stuff is free (which is probably still too cheap)

How do they deal with public trash bins on sidewalks, etc.? Are there none? If there are any, what's to prevent people dumping their garbage there and avoiding the fee? And what about homeless or otherwise poor people who don't have the means to pay?

OK, I'll bite. Suppose I wanted to avoid that. I could carry my trash out on the street, walk past three buildings and dump it in the bin near the bus stop instead of in the container behind the house. What is to stop me?

The bus stop is that close because people live densely here. Which means that there are many people per building, who collectively decide what size of garbage container to get and pay for it. I'd have to persuade a majority of the other flat owners to do the same in order to save actual money, otherwise I'd just have to pay for the container I don't use.

There aren't very many homeless people, so that problem is small. It exists but it's small. As for poor people, the garbage container is effectively included in the rent (it's a separate line item, not a separate invoice) and is cheap compared to the other line items, so that problem doesn't really exist.

I don't understand. If this 7€ per bin is something effectively included with rent, and something you're paying for anyway, then how would it discourage landfill waste? I thought the entire point was to add a cost to trash vs. recyclables.

You don't have to put recyclables into the container that costs anything (more depending on size). Depending on the economics, the garbage company will also give you other containers, free of charge, such as "paper only" and "compostable stuff only". Separate well enough and you end up with a small and cheap container after a little while.

To be fair, this can be an issue. Where I live, you put your garbage in a bag (it's about €4 a bag) on the street on Monday mornings. This means if I have a bunch of faeces-soaked stuff to get rid of on Tuesday I have to let it sit around my apartment for 6 days (I have a three week old child). I am not above tossing it in one of the neighborhood bins.

As far as the homeless, I'd much rather they use the bins than leave stuff lying around the street, even if I pay more in taxes. I definitely would prefer they would put the aluminium foil and lighters in the bin to the current approach of letting it pile up in any handy alcove.

There are trash bins but now the person doing it to save 7 € is now committing an administrative offence so now you have a few legal instances of a problem instead of many instances of an ecological problem.

This is not to say that consumers paying for their trash solves all problems.

It does, however, provide an incentive to avoid "bad" trash in the first place. "Taxing" manufacturers doesn't (because those taxes apply equally to every manufacturer)

EDIT: To be clear, taxing the manufacturer works via contributions of ecological people in facor of the unecological ones. It's the opposite of what you'd want.

I think most places in the US do pay for trash disposal. I pay ~$17 per month for trash and recycling (recycling sadly isn't free, but I opt to pay extra for it). That is probably less than you are paying, but it is a profitable business for the company that does it.