This topic brings up the issue of wrapping in Japan. Japan is notorious for having excessive wrapping. Individually wrapped cookies in a box with a plastic tray to hold each cookie. The bottom half of the box is sealed with a plastic tear off cover. The top of the box slides over. Then the entire box is wrapped in paper. If you purchase if they will then put it in a branded paper bag. If it's raining they will then p…
> some major major concerted national PR effort against it, getting celebrities, politicians, etc all on board pushing for months or years Why do you need PR when the parties responsible for all this wrapping are corporations ? It’s not the dagashi down the street giving you six layers of wrapping. When big corporations are doing something you don’t like, you don’t use PR to fix it. We’ve had plenty of PR about recyc…
That pile of used tires, cardboard, scrap metal, pretty much anything that's even slightly cheaper to recycle (into the same product like in the case of paper or something else in the case of vulcanized rubbers) than to make from scratch gets recycled wherever possible because there's a profit to be skimmed off of doing so.
Taxing people or corperations into doing what you want is a messy solution with all sorts of negative externalities (e.g. cost of compliance prevents competition and innovation). If all you care about is that the negative externalities not occasionally litter the side of the highway then I guess it's a win but I'd rather pay someone to clean up trash than drive extra business for people who make their living dealing with taxes.