Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 318 posts

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#101

Post by Johnny555 »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #91
robotkdick wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers. Given the higher cost of other materials, changing consumer behavior (which is not easy, but it's happening right now, and achievable through further exposure and education) may be the only way to change producers' behavior. While a tax seems like an easy fix, it may also cause the government to come to…

Simple. Raise the tax to a point that glass bottles, perhaps with deposit-return schemes, or cotton clothing is cheaper for the consumer than the synthetic equivalents. Consumers will buy far more of the now cheaper and more sustainable products and producers who continue using plastic will declare profit warnings and some will become insolvent. Isn't that's how it's supposed to work? Governments survived losing inco…

Simple. Raise the tax to a point that glass bottles, perhaps with deposit-return schemes, or cotton clothing is cheaper for the consumer than the synthetic equivalents

But first, make sure you understand all of the environmental costs of alternatives to be sure you're not forcing people into an environmentally worse choice. Farming is not exactly a clean industry.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#102

Post by smallnamespace »

savanaly wrote: post #88
robotkdick wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers. Given the higher cost of other materials, changing consumer behavior (which is not easy, but it's happening right now, and achievable through further exposure and education) may be the only way to change producers' behavior. While a tax seems like an easy fix, it may also cause the government to come to…

>Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers. This is not how it works. To what degree the tax gets "passed on to consumers" is based on relative elasticity of supply and demand in that market, not on the price of the good. You can read about it in absolutely any introductory microeconomics textbook.

Yes, and in that same microeconomics textbook, it will introduce you to monopoly and oligopoly models that show that markets where there are relatively few parties in one side of a bargain generally have more pricing power (and it's rational for them to use it).

Consumers generally have less pricing power than the relatively fewer producers.

Also, in truly commoditized markets where there's a lot of competition, producers aren't making large profits either, a tax increase in the raw materials must eventually be passed on to the consumer, since producers that fail to raise prices will lose money and be forced to exit the market.

So no matter how you slice it, 'not passing on the cost increase' is just not very likely with clothing, it's mostly a question of how long the price adjustment will take since there is some stickiness in consumer preference.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#103

Post by [deleted] »

francisofascii wrote: post #57
exabrial wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple of points: Taxes don't work to work to change behavior, or people would have stopped speeding a long time ago, sugary drinks wouldn't sell in Seattle, and people would stop buying coffee in California. They are an unfortunate excuse used by politicians to fool the public into "hey I'm doing something!". Instead, innovation is needed around providing biodegradable solutions that can outcompete their plastic cou…

Increasing the cost of something (through taxes) most definitely changes behavior. Just look at a how plastic bag taxes reduced usage or cigarette taxes. The purpose is not to stop plastic usage entirely, but to recognize the true cost of the usage by factoring in the harmful effects now rather than down the road. That make it a fair market, not an artificial one. I agree research and innovation is needed, and tax re…

[deleted]

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#104

Post by erulabs »

c3534l wrote: post #71
exabrial wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couple of points: Taxes don't work to work to change behavior, or people would have stopped speeding a long time ago, sugary drinks wouldn't sell in Seattle, and people would stop buying coffee in California. They are an unfortunate excuse used by politicians to fool the public into "hey I'm doing something!". Instead, innovation is needed around providing biodegradable solutions that can outcompete their plastic cou…

> Taxes don't work to work to change behavior This is absolute nonsense and flies in the face of established economic theory backed up by empirical evidence. I don't understand why there are so many people in this thread pulling assertions out of their ass like this. HackerNews is better than that.

Unfortunately the planet Earth is not a laboratory, and correlation is not causation. If a tax is added to cigarettes, and the tax is passed by elected officials, and the elected officials are responding to the attitude of the populace, how do we know it was the tax, and not _the attitude of the populace_ that lead to lower cigarette usage? A classic example of this is the Civil Rights Act. Did racism become abhorrent due to the signing of a bill, or was racism _becoming viewed as abhorrent_, and the bill codified the new cultural attitude? Keep in mind, I am of course not saying this means "no need for laws!", that would be insane - but there is no causal link and there cannot be a causal link, because one cannot do experiments with the human race. This line of thinking splits economics apart into different schools - with my conclusion being economics must be built from pure logic, upon a priori fact, rather that be gleaned by viewing society from afar. "Human Action" by Ludwig von Mises explores this in detail (https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Human%20Action_3.pdf)

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#105

Post by NeedMoreTea »

Johnny555 wrote: post #101
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple. Raise the tax to a point that glass bottles, perhaps with deposit-return schemes, or cotton clothing is cheaper for the consumer than the synthetic equivalents. Consumers will buy far more of the now cheaper and more sustainable products and producers who continue using plastic will declare profit warnings and some will become insolvent. Isn't that's how it's supposed to work? Governments survived losing inco…

Simple. Raise the tax to a point that glass bottles, perhaps with deposit-return schemes, or cotton clothing is cheaper for the consumer than the synthetic equivalents But first, make sure you understand all of the environmental costs of alternatives to be sure you're not forcing people into an environmentally worse choice. Farming is not exactly a clean industry.

Too true. Honestly at this point I wish there was a labelling requirement of the environmental and sustainability consequences of everything. Or that it was priced in to everything somehow. It's far too easy to make a very bad choice with the best of intentions.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#106

Post by ripdog »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #91
robotkdick wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers. Given the higher cost of other materials, changing consumer behavior (which is not easy, but it's happening right now, and achievable through further exposure and education) may be the only way to change producers' behavior. While a tax seems like an easy fix, it may also cause the government to come to…

Simple. Raise the tax to a point that glass bottles, perhaps with deposit-return schemes, or cotton clothing is cheaper for the consumer than the synthetic equivalents. Consumers will buy far more of the now cheaper and more sustainable products and producers who continue using plastic will declare profit warnings and some will become insolvent. Isn't that's how it's supposed to work? Governments survived losing inco…

There are externalities to the switch to glass. For example, what about the extra carbon emissions from the extra diesel burn by the trucks shipping the ingredients for the glass to the glass factory, the raw glass to the bottling plants, and the bottled beverages to the supermarkets?

The extra weight of glass over plastic is significant. It's not an easy problem to solve. Hopefully truly compostable plastics will come along to save us, although they themselves emit gases when they decompose, and the additives may have food health risks.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#107

Post by kingkawn »

Personal anecdote; just got back from a trip to Hawaii. Many of the beaches there had significant deposits of pebble sized and smaller visible plastic particles. Presumably there’s exponentially more smaller ones that I couldn’t as easily see. Some of the beaches had plastic floating in the water. Locals said it wasn’t island dumped garbage, it was brought in from currents from the ocean. Horrific to see.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#110

Post by mverwijs »

ced wrote: post #52
robotkdick wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers. Given the higher cost of other materials, changing consumer behavior (which is not easy, but it's happening right now, and achievable through further exposure and education) may be the only way to change producers' behavior. While a tax seems like an easy fix, it may also cause the government to come to…

> Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers. That's the point: the higher the tax is, the more attractive the alternatives are.

And then governments will make so much money off of plastax (ha!) that they'll never ban it.
Post reply on HN