> They won’t be if you start pricing plastic packaging generated externalities in the products prices.

Sure. let's make food more expensive for poor people. That's always grand policy. It'd be one thing if it was limiting how many Chic-Fil-A sauce packets they got in their drive-thru paper bag, but this also (believe it or not) affects those trying to eat at home with minimally processed foods. At some point the 72-serving Gigantosaurus bulk Hot Pocket box in the freezer section looks better than some of the stuff that resembles food people should eat.

> It’s so impossible it’s actually done in France if

I have no clue why people can't just magically wish themselves French and have entire centuries of French culture and habits imprinted on them just because people who played too much SimCity 2000 as a kid think that other people's lives should be micromanaged for a higher score. God save us from the technocrats.

> Sure. let's make food more expensive for poor people.

I know I started this whole argument by speaking up in favor of efficiently throwing things away, but I do want to speak out in favor of making (harmful) things more expensive for poor people; and giving poor people enough money to make up for it.

This also applies to a lot of other things, like taxing semi trucks for the insane amounts of damage they do to the roads compared to other vehicles, and then paying poor people for the increased price of goods at Wal-Mart. It may sound like taking extra steps to have the same result; but because you're reducing externalized costs instead of subsidizing them, everybody ends up better off.

> Sure. let's make food more expensive for poor people.

The magic of deposit refund system is that you only pay more once. Plus really poor people can actually collect unreturned items to make some change. Have you ever considered how things worked before plastic?

> I have no clue

That much is pretty clear.

I’m very happy to see that you are able to claw at anything so that your initial impossible as actually been exposed as entirely possible. I think it’s nice that you are so afraid of change you can’t even fathom taking such large steps as using reusable containers to limit trash.

> The magic of deposit refund system is that you only pay more once.

Your insight into the economics of this is shallow. If plastic is cheaper than glass, a "deposit refund scheme" doesn't fix the fact that forcing everything to glass makes it more expensive. Glass jars aren't just washed and reused, they have to be melted down to be reused at all. There's a big fuel usage penalty there (not to mention this is fossil fuel, so all the climate change connotations). In some really pathological scenarios, the single-use plastics can actually be better for the environment, since once the plastic is landfilled the carbon stays out of the air.

> That much is pretty clear.

Cheap shot. About all you have, isn't it? Just big dumb ideas that make you feel good, that you've never much contemplated to any depth, that would make things worse for everyone.

> Glass jars aren't just washed and reused, they have to be melted down to be reused at all.

Glass, unlike plastic, is impermeable. In Germany, the pfand system incentivizes bottle return by around $.10 to $.50 per glass bottle; and they're washed & sterilized, then re-used.

This does work as a subsidy for poor people with time on their hands; pfand bottles are often left next to outdoor trash cans instead of in them, and they usually disappear very quickly.

> Glass, unlike plastic, is impermeable. In Germany, the pfand system incentivizes bottle return by around $.10 to $.50 per glass bottle; and they're washed & sterilized, then re-used.

Glass jars tend to have small fractures, especially around where the lid/cap are, making them unfit for reuse. Inspection is tedious and manpower-intensive. Melted down and put back into the blow molds, if reused at all. Industry works differently than the political perception of it. You might want them to be reused, but it's just not the way the world works.

Instead of jacking off over political videos, go watch some of the non-political ones of the "how it's made" variety once in awhile.

I live in Germany and I see glass bottles that have been obviously re-used--e.g., beer from one brewery in glass embossed with the slightly-raised lettering of another brewery.

I couldn't tell you whether it's economically efficient or energy-efficient to do things that way, when you consider all the direct and indirect inputs; any more than I could tell you how to make a pencil. But I can tell you that Germany does it.