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Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by lumost on Thursday October 08, 2020 @12:00PM (#24720377)
A deposit/tax system on plastic containers would likely end most plastic packaging. Consumers tend to prefer the metallic/glass/paper packages when given the choice. to enforce reasonable economics on the recycling side the deposit would likely need to be an order of magnitude higher than the cost of the plastic.

This may provide incentive for either biodegradable or clean burning plastics in the market which could have lower taxes/deposits.

Re:Recycling was a lie to sell more plastic, recycling indus... by sumtechguy on Thursday October 08, 2020 @01:40PM (#24721605)
Deposit systems are usually better when the object is reused in some way. Just to put a deposit on something that will be immediately thrown away/recycled I think creates a negative tax issue.

The side issue is plastic is wildly cheap to use and make. You can try to create tax systems that break that. But you just create resentment. A better way is to figure out how to make the other more sturdy reusable and recyclable materials better and cheaper than plastic. Reuse has the issue of re-collection/cleaning and that costs money. If you can crack that the whole market will skip plastic. Anything else tries to bend the market. It usually does not react well to that and creates undesirable side effects. The same thing happened in the coal markets with relation to nat gas. Natural gas became cheaper than coal and easier to use. Huge swaths of the energy market basically ran towards it. If something like that could happen in the plastics markets it would change the world.