Hungary has plastic tax, still it's every where. In the case of prosciutto I guess it's because sliced up meat needs to be protected from drying out even if it is preserved. You can't prevent this with paper, so the shelf life would be short. So you either need a deli counter in the shop, or have customers buy the meat in bulk.

Plastic just lets you see it. Wax paper works perfectly well for protecting things from desiccation.

Does it spoil faster with wax paper since it is open to the outside air and oxygen and microbes that are about?

You enclose the product in the wax paper and seal it closed with the slightest amount of heat.

Yup. sure, sealed, but is it sanitary enough?

They used to seal jellies and jam with wax over the top. Unfortunately, this method made it more likely that you would get food poisoning (and it is still an issue with home canning, but we are a little safer).

Hence the question about if it keeps out microbes and such.

Can you provide evidence that the wax is failing and not some simpler explanation like "you can pasterize the product plastic and all" or just basic home canning issues? Wax is used everywhere for water/air proofing but somehow only fails in food?

Tax will not make it go away, only make it more expensive to people on a budget. You gotta buy food and at some point you don't care how it is packaged as you must eat.

But is it fair to pass the externalities onto someone else - you get your prosciutto and someone else gets the mess? That's doesn't seem right to me.

As opposed to an arbitrary tax discourage something I would whole-heartedly support that the cost of all products includes the cost of all externalities.

Maybe people on a budget should wait in the deli line for their prosciutto, or buy something cheaper.

Only fair is to ban non-degradable packaging altogether. Give companies a year or two of transitional period and then heavily fine companies not implementing the ban.

> Tax will not make it go away, only make it more expensive to people on a budget

This is a matter of the size of the tax. If a Snickers bar was slapped with a $30 plastic tax, you can be sure Snickers would not come wrapped in plastic tomorrow.

It would come "from the back of the van". If there is a demand and supply vacuum (product not available at a price majority of people who wants it can afford), then you'll find brave people wanting to make extra money on the side and simply dealing these.