That argument would work for plastics that are used internally inside eg Coca-Cola.
But your next example talks about bottles handed out to customers. The benefit here is to those customers.
If eg customers were demanding glass bottles (because of some benefit), and demanding them enough to pay the difference in production costs (including shipping costs etc), Coca-Cola would gladly sell them glass bottles.
In any case, corporations are just legal shells. The real stakeholders are still people. Customers, shareholders, creditors, suppliers, rank-and-file workers and, most important in practice, managers.
Please provide evidence that this is market pull rather than company push? How many convenience stores provide a glass or aluminium alternative? How much advertising is done with PET bottles versus the alternatives?
> and demanding them enough to pay the difference in production costs (including shipping costs etc)
Plastic is cheaper because companies have externalized the cost of waste disposal. The environmental impact of plastic has a cost that current polluting companies are not paying.
Most beer comes in glass bottles. The economics that ostensibly make companies prefer PET over glass are just the same for beer as for soda. The difference is in consumer preferences.
> Plastic is cheaper because companies have externalized the cost of waste disposal. The environmental impact of plastic has a cost that current polluting companies are not paying.
Compare this alternative point of view:
Consumers prefers soda in plastic bottles over the alternatives, because they reap all the benefits, while the cost of waste disposal has been externalized. The environmental impact of plastic has a cost that current polluting customers are not paying.
Absolutely false, mass volume beer manufacturers would absolutely love to push for plastic beer bottles. However plastic is actually far more permeable to oxygen than glass and so beer slowly goes flat in plastic bottles, which is why they are forced to use glass. The reason is purely technical and has absolutely nothing to do with consumer preference.
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just pointing to the reality that plastics there are so many benefits and it's so entrenched as part of our lives that it's not going anywhere.
Regulation of clean up would be one great solution.
Risk for whom, and reward for whom?
You imply that it is the people exposed to the risk that largely benefit when it is mostly a margin/profit reward for companies who continue to externalize the environmental costs of plastic onto everybody else.
Reminder that Coca-Cola alone produces more than 110 _billion_ PET bottles a year, without any responsability for their collection or safe disposal. [0]
Disposal of plastic, should be an operational cost for the likes of Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, Unilever, Kraft, Mars, etc.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/02/coca-col...