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Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

If an alternative is more expensive, it seems like we should at least consider whether it’s also wasting more resources? I would want to see the comparison done well, rather than simply assuming that plastic must be worse.

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it's not even necessarily about waste of resources. many microplastics and other complex oil-derived chemicals are quite obviously not [known to be] safe for human and other animals' health. we know pretty much for sure that most wood, glass types and natural fibres are safe.

We don't bake cost of proper disposal into materials, that is why plastic is so cheap.

The Chinese manufacture the stuff like crazy and ships it all of SEA. Rural communities dump it into their rivers and all of that washes out into the ocean which ends up EVERYWHERE.

Plastic, and oil in general, has been a global ecologic CATASTROPHE.

Cost of disposal for plastic is very small. You can get it into a well-made landfill for a couple pennies per pound in the US. Charging manufacturers an extra little fraction of a penny for an item isn't a bad idea but it wouldn't affect much. What matters is government desire to handle trash properly.

If you factor in the cost of any government managed trash cleanup, it might. Basically require producers to cover all of the costs required to get the trash disposed of properly. Filtering micro-plastics out of the ocean? Add it to the plastic tax. Health costs from birth defects caused by certain plastic exposure? Add it to the tax for those plastics.

I think the market works amazingly as long as there's government to line the incentives up right.

I think disposing properly would mostly be a few more public trash cans and a ban on exporting plastic and trash to get fake-recycled. Which would not cost very much.

The USA is not the problem, it is SEA. Most of our trash ends up in landfills, which is much preferable to the ocean.

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