Absolutely!
It is far too easy to create disposable crap that ends up dumped all over the planet. I get so frustrated seeing garbage all over the place in natural places.
I do think its a lot easier to focus on the higher ticket items first.
I’d expect they could ship me the bare sd card in a tiny envelope without all that waste if they were incentivized to.
I never understood the mindset of buying only a usb-stick or similar online.
Yes, the waste is obnoxious, but the consumer isn't always innocent either.
Some sort of emergency? Sure, but that is hardly the norm.
Next day: two packages. From the same vendor.
(Now that I think about it, the original sin was buying a product that is not rechargeable.)
Let's not forget all the packaging in shipping the item to the destination as well (that you don't see because it's discarded in the shipping room floor).
It's gotten to the point where I simply don't buy unless I absolutely need it anymore.
I mean, that is the most environmentally friendly solution.
The result? Televisions are one of the most common forms of road trash now. Often on the way to/ from the dump. As soon as you charge someone to get rid of something, the temptation to just dump it on the side of the road increases.
Its bad enough I almost think we should just eliminate all dump fees and charge everything upstream. If you charge for disposal at the time of sale, then you don't need to charge at the time of disposal. Then you remove the incentive to dump elsewhere.
Yep; and even if it turns out that there are two companies who offer products in the same market place, one with a kilogram of useless packaging and the other without any, it doesn't mean that the packaging is a salient distinction. I can't decide "I want to buy an iPhone without useless packaging" and the choice "Should I buy an iPhone with packaging or a lowend Android phone without packaging" isn't actually a plausible decision.
1- electronics HW (HDD, TV, microSD-card, etc..) recycling costs are already embedded in the cost of any new stuff that is sold (there is a little bit of extra price to be paid when buying new HW, that in turn will cover the costs to recycle the old HW that is probably being replaced or that will be replaced in the future). People dump their old HW to collection centers for free, which is then partially recycled (current technology cannot yet recover all metals etc.. contained in HW).
2- Some specific trash (e.g. PET, metals, etc...) can be brought to recycling collection centers and dumped there for free, which is then recycled.
3- To "motivate" people to produce as less non-recyclable trash as possible and to get rid of recyclable stuff in the right way (points #1 & #2), anything that gets into the non-recyclable trash must be paid for - e.g. we have to pay ~2 USD for a 35-liters trash bag, big objects need a special "sticker" that must be bought (don't remember how much it costs) => normal trash bags and big stuff without sticker don't get collected, so you cannot just leave them on the street.
In general, during the last years this put quite some pressure as well on the retailers (meaning the final shops from which you buy stuff): in the past they used e.g. the many small chunks of polystyrene ( https://www.vertapak.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/polyst... ) to cushion what was in their packages, but now they all almost always use small inflatable bags - in both cases still plastic, but the amount of material is like 1000 times lower. They did it because many people continuously complained a bit to them that on one hand polystyrene wasn't environmental, but as well or especially because they had to use a lot of space in the "special costly trash bag" to throw that stuff away.
I admit that I'm not the best recycler (PET+HW+batteries+lightbulbs+clothes always, but rarely stuff like metal and glass and paper), but in the end I think that I'm at least "ok".
Switzerland doesn't have a nation-wide law about it, and if I want I can still throw away stuff into the non-recyclable loop, but if I do it then I have to pay for it (by buying the special trash bag or sticker) as I usually do when I throw away cans and bottles mixed with other stuff => freedom, but at a price - that sentence does sound horrible but in this context of recycling it just makes sense, and for me it works absolutely well :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_management_in_Switzerlan...
For example:
1- it does happen that sometimes some illegal trash bags are found in the woods (most of the time it's still in trash bags and not spread everywhere as they usually don't contain animal/vegetable stuff, as that would anyway be free to be disposed of, therefore animals don't sniff it therefore they don't mess it up), but then they're reported to the police/municipality by whoever discovered them and are then collected.
2- same thing in urban areas: sometimes (very rarely as much as I know and have experienced) some "illegal" trash bags show up in your own trash-container, then usually you have to talk to the trash collector and they'll still pick it up.
But:
- about case #2, as mentioned in Wikipedia, the analysis of what's contained in the illegal trash does happen for real (kind of "CSI: Trash"), so if I would put into it something which shows my name (e.g. old newspaper) then I would be screwed (probably not the first time, but I would be by the 2nd or 3rd time that the same thing happens). Even if I would do everything perfectly then after at least the 2nd time all neighbours would all try to find the perpetrator => high risk.
- about case #1 and in general, the country is small and has a relatively high density in the habitable areas (e.g. not in the mountains) => many eyes around, so if you keep doing that twice or three times you are likely to be noticed by somebody, who will report that to the police or at least the municipality - same thing about rural areas (fewer eyes but as well fewer visitors, therefore likeliness of being observed doing something bad after repeated offense is still high). Nothing in the mountains as far a I know (too much effort driving up there to then take the risk to dump stuff while potentially being photographed from the other side of the valley by e.g. someone that was doing trekking).
I believe that we don't have problems with electronics like TVs, washing machines, HDDs, fridges, etc... because you can just dump them for free at any shop that sells them (that's the embedded-tax-thing I mentioned above), so it would be a waste of time & effort plus a lot of risk to dump them into the woods instead of doing the same thing comfortably and officially at any such shop (I admit that some shops get more old stuff than others due to their location and parking space, but nothing is perfect).
In bigger countries that have more open/free space, illegal dumping would most probably be a much bigger problem. But on one hand people that do repeated illegal dumping could still be caught, and on the other hand the target is never 100% - already having something like 75% of the population sticking to the waste disposal rules (recycling being a subset) is probably a huge improvement vs. doing nothing :)
Interesting - to be honest I'm not sure if Switzerland has the same rule or not - so far I always brought my old stuff to local retailers even if I didn't buy anything from them - usually we just leave the stuff outside of the shop in some designated areas. It could be that the retailers then "get a cut" on what is sent to be recycled, I honestly don't know, but so far nobody ever complained to me.
One thing that is not so great is that outside of those shops there are usually "scavengers" (trying to find something valuable that can be reused or sold - quite good chances for that to happen in Switzerland) that can make quite a mess (e.g. they might break a TV-panel trying to reach for whatever is behind them => glass everywhere on the floor).
I usually position my own stuff tactically to avoid that and leave on it a post-it stating something like "panel has broken pixels" or "device works but battery cannot be charged" or "works perfectly it was just old", etc... => little effort for me, less effort for the scavengers and the shop's recycling area doesn't get messed up :)
Bad idea. The market is supposed to process information for us. Consumers are just individuals who know what they need and what they want, but not much else. The market (if we are to believe the hype) can process enough information to make selfish actors in aggregate cooperate. So why not let the market solve it?
Consumer-responsibility is pure propaganda: in the same way “we” (collectively) drop plastic into the middle of the ocean, “we” (chiefly the corporations and their marketing departments) drop the symbolic responsibility on consumers.