I would believe it. If the problem really is a supply/demand imbalance, the market should correct it. But nobody will pay me for my used plastic bottles.
In California and some other US states, you can sell them, though this is in part due to a redemption fee charged when you buy them. Here's a price chart from this year (price per pound):
Aluminum Cans - $1.59 Glass Bottles - $0.104 #1 PETE Plastic Bottles - $1.16 #2 HDPE Plastic Bottles - $0.59 #3 PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) - $0.56 #4 LDPE Plastic Bottles -$2.03 #5 PP Plastic Bottles - $0.60 #6 PS Plastic Bottles - $5.69 #7 Others Plastic Bottles - $0.31 Bimetal - $0.35
This is profitable enough that crews of people come around to steal curbside recyclables in many California cities [1].
[1] http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Battle-brews-over-raiders...
isn't this the type of thing where a tax might be useful- for example, a tax on products that use 'new' plastic/glass as opposed to recycled? basically, convert the 'cost' of garbage everywhere into an actual cost?
Taxes are useful to capture externalities, where the costs imposed are on other people unrelated to the transaction. For example, taxing air pollution helps to capture the costs it imposes on the general population, which the manufacturer and their customer could otherwise ignore.
Quantifying that cost is a challenge--maybe start with how much $$ it would take to "un-product" the product and return it back to the raw materials it came from. In some cases, we'd find it probably costs more to un-make a product than it was sold for.
Could also (in addition to, or instead of) charge the MANUFACTURER for a portion of this shared environmental cost, as they ultimately chose to make a product designed to be turned into pollution.
I wouldn't want to put a tax on the manufacturers, because you'll end up discouraging reuse. You don't want somebody who comes up with a novel way of using old Coke bottles to pay the same as somebody who just pitches them.
Taxes are a cost of doing business. Tax breaks and incentives is unearned income.
Apparently from the discussion here, working with recycled material is more costly for corporations and therefore they
would not be compelled to give up profits to save the environment and improve sustainability.
So, it's now either the people's or the govt's duty to step in and try to mitigate the risk since the market dynamics are
not favorable to work on their own.
People or govt could help by subsidizing the cost of recycling the materials and making it more appealing for businesses to
use them in their manufacturing processes and therefore preserving the environment.
As to which is better raising taxes or giving tax breaks from the point of view of govt interference, I believe that
incentive is less invasive and more importantly less coercive than raising taxes and distorting the market and pushing the
increase in operating costs to the consumers instead.
Unfortunately it's also leading to local government approving incinerators for other types of rubbish