Norway has a tax on drinks containers, and an optional bottle returns scheme, but with a tax refund tied to return rates which means almost everywhere participates in the deposit/returns scheme because its cheaper than paying the tax. I wish that mechanism was extended to a lot more things.

This sounds good until you have to wait 10 minutes on the local return point to get 30 cent back.

You really need to not value your time at all to be willing to participate on those schemes.

Germany had a similar scheme for returning soda bottles when I studied there (no idea if they still do). I would save up a few bottles before bothering to return them. Took a couple of minutes max. Hardly a big effort.

No one is standing in line to return one bottle.

My local grocery store has a similar return system for glass milk bottles. You just turn them in at the register when you check out. Even simpler.

Huh? It typically takes about 10 seconds per bottle during your grocery shopping.

That’s exactly what the WEEE directive is in the UK/EU. I ran a company that manufactured and sold an electrical product and we had to pay an amount based on weight sold per quarter from memory. I have no idea if it’s actually used to help with disposal of end of life electrical waste but we paid a decent amount of 8 years of sales.

In Madrid at least we have “Puntos Limpios”, where consumers can properly dispose of many different kinds of waste, including electrical appliances, for free.

In addition, once a month there is a “punto limpio móvil” on each neighbourhood: a small truck from the city parks on a reserved spot for 2h to get the special waste from the neighbours, also for free.

That sounds fantastic. I'm in London and the lack of easy waste disposal without a car is the only thing that makes me wish I was driving... It's such an own goal that you create an incentive to keep having a car if you want to recycle.

this is the galaxy brain solution

One example is here in Japan, PC manufacturers have a legal duty to collect and recycle any PC they sell https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/recycle/main/admin_info/law/02...

So if you have some old PC you need to get rid of, you just call the PC manufacturer and they send a pre-paid shipping label and box to your home and the mailman comes to pick it up at their expense.