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Comment by IvyMike | Hacker News Reader

I think all packaging material should be taxed by weight, but with a multiplier that corresponds to the amount of that type of material which is actually recycled. Glass is heavy, but the data shows that 90% of it is recycled? The tax is 90% off.

This would do three things:

1) Encourage manufacturers to use materials which are actually recycled. 2) Encourage manufacturers to reduce total material. 3) Encourage manufacturers to invest in new methods of recycling to move the multiplier in their favor.

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I get taxing companies for things that cost taxpayers money, but why do this based on recyclability? It seems like more of an economic problem: if recycled plastic costs more than new plastic, then why is it better? Charge companies for packaging that ends up in the landfill instead, otherwise these companies are essentially being subsidized by taxpayers to package things however is more profitable without having to account for that cost.

Yeah, the tax should reward companies that reuse their packaging. Glass bottles are east to clean and return for reuse, but we stopped doing that nearly 100 years ago.

At most 40 years ago. I remember turning in our used Coke bottles at Heinen's for the bottle deposit back in the late 1980s in Cleveland, OH. You could tell the reused bottles by the distinctive white chipping pattern around the raised features.

Where I live in western Canada there's still some regional dairies that have reusable glass bottles (they even put the year the bottle entered circulation, they seem to last several years pretty easily).

In Denver, there's a dairy that still does morning delivery in reusable bottles, albeit plastic.

The model still seems to work fine on a certain scale.

The end started about 100 years ago. Some companies held out for many years longer. 40 years ago there was already a lot of plastic, though I'll admit to not having a better timeline

Norway reused plastic bottles until sometime last decade (now we only recycle) and I think that in my childhood in the 80ies we reused glass bottles as well, but I am not sure about that last point.

At my store the same size/type of olive oil comes in plastic bottle or glass bottle and the glass bottle is a dollar more expensive.

It was a bit confusing, but when I said "amount of that type of material which is actually recycled", think I'm agreeing with @surement: look at the amount of material in the actual landfill stream vs the recycle stream. If studies show that overall, 1% of plastic is recycled and 99% goes to the landfill, then all plastic material in all products will be charged at 99% of the tax rate. The incentive here is to encourage companies to develop technology to move the recycle rate from 1% to 10% to 50%, etc. Adjust that discount quarterly or annually or whatever.

Plastic would still win in this case. It needs to relate to the environmental cost of production and disposal.

Taxing the consumer and forcing that tax to be in the advertised price-point would do wonders. Would leverage capitalism to drive packaging waste reduction. Doesn't even need to be a national thing, if just the state of California implemented this it would drive reductions nation-wide.

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