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>No form of recycling will work if people don’t use the bin.

blaming consumers for the industry waste that's being released from their factories into the public environment is diluting responsibility. If the governments were not subjects of the big multinational petrochemical corporations, they should charge a deposit for every gram of plastic that customers acquire, similar to the German Pfand for plastic bottles and cans (0,25 euro cent).

If a plastic contains 33 grams of plastic as described in their QR code or instruction manual, charge the customer a deposit of 3,3 dollars for each product and pay the customer 3,3 dollars for bringing back that amount of plastic. The environment would be pristine

Plastic is cheap because the future generations are paying the price of pollution

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Several US states have this program for glass and cans and yet both glass and cans are still found on the side of the road.

"Are still found" implies we can only accept perfection. Back in the real world, bottle bills double rates of recycling (33% to 70%).

Keep America Beautiful, a packaging industry greenwashing group, developed the industry's modern response to policy. They're against bottle bills too, despite the fact that they're an extremely cost-effective anti-litter policy.

Back when the 5¢ deposit was introduced it was equivalent to more than 25¢ today, so today's policy is limited by a failure to update with the times. In Michigan (which has a still-pretty-measly 10¢ deposit) they see recycling rates of 97%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislation_...

not debating in either direction, but wouldn’t it be arguable that bottle bills are merely associated with increased recycling, since probably they are voted in by constituencies who are already more likely to recycle?

The hypothesis is easy to test by looking at historical recycling rates. If they track public opinion then it's confirmed, but if there's a sharp increase when bottle bills pass then it's mostly the (predictable) price signaling effect.

I find the doubt that prices work a bit surprising, since generally HN audiences tend to be above average in market literacy otherwise.

https://www.bottlebill.org/index.php/benefits-of-bottle-bill...

ok, but visit a beach in a country where the people put the plastic in a bin, and then visit a beach in a country where the people don’t put the plastic in a bin.

Yea the graphic/map with source of plastic pollution per river delta is pretty eye opening.

Which I suspect is why it's not better known or distributed.

Do you have a link with more tangible details?

I was under the impression that ocean plastic was comprised largely from discarded/lost material from ocean going industries followed by tyre dust.

A quick google didn't reveal much more than organizations think science is done by SEO.

Found a lot of incomparable data being compared. Measurements by mass, measurements by particle. Varying definitions of what constitutes a microplastic. from >2cm to >0.1mm

I found claims for top 10 rivers ranging from 95% to 18% of the river plastic. In general a lot of percentages, and few absolute numbers. In general it makes me despair for finding actual data. I'd like to be able to at least check that they calculated the percentage correctly mathematically. Preferably I could also know what as a proportion of what was being calculated so I could have some confidence that they were at least the same class of thing.

This one? https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Mass-of-river-plastic-fl...

I don't know enough to distinguish that this isn't just a graphic of population x flow rate.

That's similar to the one I've seen.

It uses some averages and rates to backfill totals, but isn't just pop x flow.

It has a coefficient for 'waste mismanagement' which seems to dominate the eqn of how much ends up in the rivers vs landfills or otherwise secured.

If you believe that (it's the fault of the industry) a common answer is to put a cap on plastic production, just like we put a cap on ozone destroying CFCs. First you prevent growth in the industry (it's easier to tell the industry not to build more factories than it is to tell them not to use the ones they built) and then you phase out.

> blaming consumers

Why not blame consumers which would dispose their garbage wherever they want instead of a bin? I would rather criminalize this. It's so easy to put an empty plastic bottle in a bin yet they insist on throwing it on the ground.

You should know you're repeating verbatim a propaganda line developed by the packaging industry to avoid (at the time impending) regulation, similar to the plastic industry's "recycling makes it all okay" and fossil & tobacco's "scientists disagree."

https://web.archive.org/web/20050401181834/http://www.altern...

Throwing plastic on the ground instead of in a bin is already illegal, and often carries $1000 fines if you are caught. And putting it in a bin already is just kicking the can down the road. I say we blame the corporations who are making materials that are nearly impossible to effectively recycle, don't biodegrade within several human lifespans, and break down into something that may very well be poisonous to us and our ecosystems.

Blaming consumers for this is like blaming them for lead in gasoline.

> Throwing plastic on the ground instead of in a bin is already illegal, and often carries $1000 fines if you are caught.

Is this ever enforced anywhere outside Singapore? I don't think anybody cares.

In state parks, but I haven't seen it really enforced in most of the US. The point is that litter isn't the primary problem with plastic. Most of the issues with it have nothing to do with the littering of random citizens, to the point that it's not even worth bringing up in a conversation about plastic.

But do you think a citizen who doesn't care about throwing their bottles across the road, will care to vote for a recycling initiative? Education has to start somewhere.

I've lived on an impoverished tropical island which was covered by a thick layer of plastic and cans. Somebody explained to me: "these folks have been throwing away their waste mindlessly for generations, the problem now is that all this pollution does not degrade"

>It's so easy to put an empty plastic bottle in a bin

you're not solving the plastic pollution problem, you are only sending your waste to pollute Thailand.

The solution to the mass-death that a plasticised environment is causing is not to blame the victims, but to analyse the root of the problem: entrepreneurs and factory owners who abuse plastic because it's cheap

> you're not solving the plastic pollution problem, you are only sending your waste to pollute Thailand.

Every time I walk a road in Thailand, also anywhere else, I pick up every piece of trash I stumble upon to throw it into the first bin I encounter. Thanks G-d I haven't been to the places where there is too much garbage and no bins.

I know that Thailand allegedly stopped buying western plastic waste but I’m too stingy to drop a GPS tracking device in my plastic container to see where it’s headed to.

Almost all of the waste plastic comes from the offering of cheap wrappings by cheap companies (i.e. super conglomerates) used by cheap people who simply do not care. Make it expensive and all these people will complain you are impinging on their freedoms.

The oil industries will complain The single use plastic purveyers will complain and the lazy consumers will complain, yet exactly like Germany, it must be done.

Some people think it's cool to burn money, while others purchase unneeded AI farms.

We, companies who make, companies who sell, and consumers who use as well as permissive governments all dilute responsibility, and a vast majority of plastics I pickup are simply the tops of plastic food containers.

How many are sealing reusable containers? Zero. how many straws? Thousands.

Make plastic straws the gold standard for recycling. worst offenders? The top fast food venders in food deserts. Cheap companies serving cheap lazy customers.

The poster is absolutely right.

You forgot about the health and safety regulators

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