A) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

B) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics

Plastic containers of all types should be reusable and there should also be incentives for reusing them. We don't make a screw, use it to build something and then discard it once we disassemble the thing.

For the last point, I'd definitely want to see examples where taxes are more efficient than bans. Everything I've seen and read (and I like to read a lot), points the other way around.

So I'd definitely want to read some studies that says that tax increases are better than bans.

As a single counterpoint, we've been taxing cigarettes a ton for several decades. Smoking rates have gone down, but only extremely slowly. It took decades. So if you consider partially solving an issue after several decades "efficient", then yeah, taxes are efficient.

> As a single counterpoint, we've been taxing cigarettes a ton for several decades. Smoking rates have gone down, but only extremely slowly. It took decades. So if you consider partially solving an issue after several decades "efficient", then yeah, taxes are efficient.

Economists usually take into account that people also get utility out of eg using plastic straws or smoking cigarettes. They are by and large not a very judgy lot.

Taxes just make it so that the private cost-benefit decision can take into account (ie 'internalize') the costs to the public.

Your examples of screws is great to illustrate this! We don't ban the discarding of screws, and it would be somewhat silly to do so.

> For the last point, I'd definitely want to see examples where taxes are more efficient than bans. Everything I've seen and read (and I like to read a lot), points the other way around.

What are you reading? I am talking about efficiency in the same sense as it's used in economics. And taxes being more efficient than bans is pretty much Econ 101. But I can dig up some links, if you want to.

Sounds like proper sewage processing and landfills would be better and faster solutions to A and B.

Then we can also talk about Asia being the primary source of the trash in oceans...

1. People throw trash everywhere. You'll see trash on Mount Everest, you'll see it in a random forest in Eastern Europe.

2. Landfills are not enough. Rich countries just "export" their trash for storage in poor countries.

We're just making too much trash, there's no "proper" or "better". Reduce, reuse, recyle. Recycle is mostly a lie.

We need reduce and reuse.

In Poland it became harder to export trash to other countries, so instead landfill owners started burning all their trash to make space for new. Commentators refer to it jokingly as "storing trash in the cloud".

> People throw trash everywhere. You'll see trash on Mount Everest, you'll see it in a random forest in Eastern Europe.

That's true, but doesn't mean much. Just like for poisons, dosage is important.