In Germany we had rules that shops have to take back packaging, but especially with online shops this just wasn't used enough, so now the shop or manufacturer has to pay a (weight-based) fee for all the packaging they give to consumers. Pretty small though from what I've heard.

I’d be in favor of requiring manufacturers to take back unneeded product packaging, paying for postage if necessary.

EDIT: Reading more of this thread, it looks like everyone is suggesting this, so my comment does not add much.

So why is this obvious solution not implemented?

Because mailing garbage is a terrible idea. It's worse for the environment that almost all other options.

So is driving your garbage back to the store where you bought something.

The whole process, taken as a whole, just doesn't make any environmental sense.

Unless it's a store that you have to drive to anyway. For example, my dry cleaner years ago used to "recycle" hangers. You could bring back your hangers from the previous time and get like 2 to 10 cents off your current order for each hanger you returned. (Don't recall the exact amount, probably closer to 2 cents if I think about it.) This was nice because you were going there anyway, and also because you didn't end up with a closet full of empty hangers!

This is also what we did with soda cans when I lived in Michigan. You'd pay 10 cents extra per can, and then get it back when you returned them. If you didn't return them, the state had 10 cents to use to clean up waste produced by that can. If you did, you got your money back and the can got recycled. It seemed to work pretty well. I remember a year after they started the program noting how much cleaner the roads seemed because people were going out and picking up cans to return them and fewer people were throwing them out their car windows.

Most plastic waste is from weekly groceries. No one in their right mind would make a special trip to take the junk back, simply take a black sack with the previous week's garbage when next going shopping. It would be no additional cost and minimal inconvenience.

It's how recycling used to work. There were big skips for glass, paper, textiles etc in most supermarket car parks. They were well utilised by shoppers before entering the store. Before that we used to return the empties for reuse within the store.

If a campaign of returns caused supermarkets to restrict suppliers, and create less in the first place, I would do so diligently.

At least here, experience showed that people do not bring stuff back, I don't think mailing it back would be any better: if they don't want to bring packaging to the store, will they carry it to the post office to mail back?

It also seems like a massive environmental waste to ship individual packages of garbage around, when you can handle it locally just as well, and have manufacturers pay for it.

> So why is this obvious solution not implemented?

I have no inside information but I think it is because manufacturers will collude to add this as a visible added cost to the cost of the product. Consumers will think stuff became more expensive because of some idiots in DC/Brussels.

It's a collective action problem like any other. Collusion on a wide scale in competitive markets is pretty damn difficult, since one company can change their manufacturing processes to produce less waste and suddenly undercut everyone else's prices. "Passing the whole price increase onto the consumer" rarely withstands scrutiny, excluding cases with very low demand elasticity or very oligarchic suppliers. Neither of these are the case for the vast majority of packaged goods that are sold.

The incentive to minimize their packaging already exists though, both in shipping costs and just the material costs.

>It may reduce contamination of recycling streams, but does nothing to encourage less production.

Sure it does. If you're going to slapped with a $200 fine every time you screw up with your recycling, and you have to pay by the bag to throw stuff in the landfill, if you have half a brain, you're going to think twice about every purchase you make, and if you really need it. That $1 water bottle that costs you $200 because your kid threw it in the wrong bin is going to make you not want to give your kid another disposable water bottle.

Producers only produce as much product as consumers purchase. Less consumption will result in less production.

Or it may just create perverse incentives fir people to throw everything in landfill. Not 100% sure where to put that $1 drink bottle, throw in the trash and don't risk a $200.

Not sure how that could be prevented.

Throwing recyclable goods in to the landfill bag nets you a fine. That's the whole point - you sort correctly, or you pay up. If you are unable to sort your trash - you don't buy stuff. The landfill bags are for non-recyclable items.

That makes no sense as policy. 1 cubic metre of landfill space costs the same whether you fill it with "recyclable" or "non-recyclable" items.

> If Tesco were filled with piles of consumer waste given back to them

I vaguely remember seeing something about this happening in Germany where households are charged by the amount of rubbish that has to be collected. So people unwrap things in the shop and leave the packaging behind.

Honestly, companies really ought to be charged for the disposal of all that packaging they choke their products with. There seems to be no back pressure stopping manufacturers from wrapping a 10g USB stick in 400g of plastic packaging/advertising.

It’s not perfect but it tries to price an externality back in. Consumers may demand better packaging if this was a thing in the US, providing manufacturers to improve their waste level.

Less production means less growth - means less future revenue - which means less chance of paying off all those loans predicated on consumption growth patterns.

Also - consumption isn’t all bad. There’s many poor people who can’t afford much, and we very much are promising a better life where they can consume goods and lead healthy lives (goods such as medicine, clean water and chocolate as much as Coca Cola in a plastic bottle)

And also - if people were charged for old school packaging, costs would go up. People wouldn’t buy as much and this would start a new round of economic troubles.

At its price point, I suspect that plastic is so cheap, that even with all the pollution and waste being collected, it’s still ends up with positive utility.

There’s a report on carry bags which shows reusable cloth bags have significantly higher environmental impact because of the cost of production costs, water use and eventual decay into some carbon gas like Methane.

They do it really straightforwardly where I live in Wales. Garbage is collected every six weeks, from a 120L wheelie bin. Recycling (six streams) is collected weekly. Either you recycle, or you drown in trash.