As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling • Hacker News Board

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#291

Post by tomjen3 » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

xorfish wrote: post #260

icelancer wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a business or government pays you for it, then recycling is effective. If they don't, then obviously it isn't useful. I never really understood why people could not grasp this basic concept.

A much simpler concept is that you pay for the trash that you don't recycle. Switzerland recycles 93% of all glass bottles(color sorted by consumers) and 83% of all PET bottles. Everything else has to be burned in a plant with minimal emission to recycle energy. PET recycling is financed by a fee of around 2 cents per bottle that every manufacturer has to pay.

Do consumers generally color sort? What about the eight percent of men who are color blind?

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#292

Post by Dylan16807 » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

blablablabla991 wrote: post #287

Dylan16807 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charging the customers at point of purchase is perfectly fine and equivalent. Customers are already indirectly paying, the point is to move that cost to a point where it's super obvious and affects purchasing decisions. Customers as a group were already paying the cost of the garbage, but there was no pressure on the manufacturers to reduce it. Once you make the change then the total cost is the same, but now reducin…

You mean indirectly paying because of the costs of pollution, that society pays for? But garbage disposal already costs money, doesn't it? Maybe it doesn't cost enough - but then rising prices for garbage disposal would at least have similar effect to mandating multi use packaging, without the market distortion? The difference is that garbage disposal is the price for the actual damage that needs to be avoided. Multi…

> But garbage disposal already costs money, doesn't it?

Itemizing the cost and tying it directly to the product price makes it much more effective as an incentive.

> Maybe it doesn't cost enough - but then rising prices for garbage disposal would at least have similar effect to mandating multi use packaging, without the market distortion?

Yes, that's what I was suggesting. But you need to do it in a way that packaging choice impacts the manufacturer's profit margin as directly as possible.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#293

Post by lm28469 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 9:35 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #258

lm28469 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that what we consider "progress" today is capitalism progress. It's all about owning more and constant economical growth, it has very little to do with social or ecological progress, these might benefit from capitalism from time to tie when their goals are aligned but that's all. Recycling is like everything else, it's done when it's economically profitable (via state/country funds, tax returns, &c.) "At…

I wonder how western nations culture and ~religion even will adapt to the fact that we reached equilibrium. Meaning that we can't explore new spaces, or consume more. So we'll need to live in around a balanced zero. Over consuming will become a sort of a crime and maybe games of efficiency will appear as a sort of leisure.

That's the end of out current economical system for sure. It relies on constant growth and ever increasing production/consumption.

Everything else is considered a failure.