To the Left on recycling

[LovePrevails]

Hey does anyone have any good points to add to this, or any way to improve the way I have put it:

If you want people to recycle more and waste less, it's very easy to acheive. All you do is making free garbage disposal available to them. If people can't externalise the cost of waste disposal they have to start making different decisions about what they buy and how they dispose of their waste.

Things that are very difficult to dispose of, or unsafe to dispose of, will cost the most to arrange collection of. The more biodegradable something is the cheaper it will be to dispose of, if it is compostable it may even be free as this waste is a resource to other people. Things like glass jars and bottles, as well as tins and cans and sometimes even plastic, have already proven to be economical to recycle in many case, and so some companies may even pay to pick these up, not a huge amount, but enough to incentivise people to favour products which are sold in a recylcable fashion over things which are take-make-and-throw-away and would demand cash to dispose of.Much of the products we buy are wrapped in excess packaging, but people buy them anyway because disposal of this packing is free to dispose of at the point of use. Under a system of voluntarism people would now have an incentive to buy responsibly, because the less environmentally friendly their trash was the more they'd have to pay to get rid of it, and the more biodegradable and recyclable their trash was the easier it would be to have someone pick it up, and maybe even pay for it.  

[wdiaz03]

Hey does anyone have any good points to add to this, or any way to improve the way I have put it:

If you want people to recycle more and waste less, it's very easy to acheive. All you do is making free garbage disposal available to them.... 

 

I think you meant "DO NOT" make garbage disposal available.

 

I thought about this myself but without a form of tracking of who the garbage belongs to, people will just dump it somewhere in order to avoid the fee.

 

There will have to be a form of tracking that could not be bypassed. Say I buy a mattress that is sprayed with nanoIDs. I would have to pay for it to be collected. If I just dump it It can be traced using the nanoIDs. this technology cannot be easily bypassed. I cannot burn the mattress and bypass it. etc. The collection agency will have to record the nanoID and log somewhere that the mattress is no longer mine etc.

 

Now apply this to all sorts of products from Food waste to containers....also how do you reassign the nanoIDs, If I give my mattress away, and the person dumps it...it'll get traced to me. How would bending machines tag who they sell to? what about stolen of found items....they can be used then dumped without concerned of who will get blamed.

 

I think of this because I see people dumping trash all the time just to avoid the drive to the local collection place. or fees like construction waste (cement, bricks, tiles etc) they find a desolated place and dump it.

 

Sounds complicated, thoughts?

[FreedomPhilosophy]

I'm planning to do a program on public vs private waste disposal.One of the more interesting side issues is how a private system would tempt people to dump waste on other peoples property or in unowned places. I believe it follows that the cost of land ownership would rise due to the required policing and such a solution would also require privatization of any public space.

[LovePrevails]

By the way I was thinking of sending you some audios to use for your shows, would you be willing to consider them?

 

if you want to put our heads together on this one I will send you some more notes, I'm writing on this subject for my book

[tasmlab]

I'm planning to do a program on public vs private waste disposal.One of the more interesting side issues is how a private system would tempt people to dump waste on other peoples property or in unowned places. I believe it follows that the cost of land ownership would rise due to the required policing and such a solution would also require privatization of any public space.

 

Maybe, but:

 - The social stigma about dumping garbage is pretty ubiquitous and damning.

 - If a public space was available and people started using it as a dump, would it look much different than a city owned dump at that point?

 - I would personally pay for the convenience of somebody coming to take my trash, just like I have somebody mow my lawn and clean my house. 

 

I wouldn't be surprised if free market garbage might even be cheaper and more convenient than it is now.  If the garbage company could legally hire non-union, migrant labor they could actually man the truck with twice as many people for half the costs.  As a customer, I wouldn't have to haul my cans to the curb, they would come to where I keep them, haul them themselves and return them where they belong.

 

I am curious how paying for garbage would change consumer packaging.  As it is now, so much of the food we buy comes in tupperware or ziplock bags.  Our sliced ham is actually in a plastic bag inside of a resealable plastic container.   If I had to pay more to dispose of it, I might settle for paper and I'm sure thriftier customers would bring the containers back to the store to have them refilled.

 

This is one clowny part of left environmentalism - I don't think they consider the role free trash removal and free roads might influence human behavior.

[LovePrevails]

One of the more interesting side issues is how a private system would tempt people to dump waste on other peoples property or in unowned places. I believe it follows that the cost of land ownership would rise due to the required policing and such a solution would also require privatization of any public space.

 

A) Yes, there would be a temptation to do this, but the land owner could sue. The more frequent this became the higher the incentive for someone to invent a way to hold culprits responsible and get a share of the settlement.

B) As consumables would move towards more environmentally disposal there would be less and less reason to do this as people would be getting paid for a large portion of their garbage, or at least get some benefits like tokens for discounts off a product for returning the packaging.

C) Isn't this what is happening already with landfills? 

 

I'm sure there are more solutions

[Culain]

Tom Woods just did a show on recycling. If you have not watched it, you should.

[aeonicentity]

I think you'd just have to purchase it the way you purchase waste disposal services. here, we pay $X for a garbage can, and $Y for a recycling can that catches all. While many places in the US and around the world a different system is used, where the customer is required to separate the recycling, and if they fail the company fines them. However, As much as recycling is nice and wonderful, there's no way to force people to participate in those programs. People have to choose to participate.

 

The reality is that many government regulations are actually the cause of plastic wrapper trash. Many items are mandated by law to be packed certain ways (for example food items).

[FreedomPhilosophy]

 

I am curious how paying for garbage would change consumer packaging.  As it is now, so much of the food we buy comes in tupperware or ziplock bags.  Our sliced ham is actually in a plastic bag inside of a resealable plastic container.   If I had to pay more to dispose of it, I might settle for paper and I'm sure thriftier customers would bring the containers back to the store to have them refilled.

 

This is one clowny part of left environmentalism - I don't think they consider the role free trash removal and free roads might influence human behavior.

 

I think there would be some shift back towards paper packaging and package free loose produce. This could improve peoples health as a bonus.

[LovePrevails]

If it is not a useful resource you would be here at my door saying have you got any aluminium cans, cna I buy them? have you got any craft carboard? can I buy it? how about any hubcapsthe only thing in the rubbish dump used to be broken potterythe rag pickers picked them upif no one wants to buy it then it is not useful. you should have to pay for disposing of it because you are damaging the planet with your hard-to-dispose-of waste. that is only fair.

 

If that is my argument the left says, well, it's not that they're not useful - it's just that it's more convenient for them to damage the planet by drilling more oil than by reusing the plastic we already have. That's inconsiderate to our children who will have to pay for more il because we didn't recycle.

 

What is your reposte?

[Josh F]

I'm sure a company could profit by picking u trash or free if the trash was recyclable.  Not that I really did the math on this....

[LovePrevails]

My brother was saying how an electronics outlet would throw out their old stock and lock the bins and how wasteful this was

 

this would be very unlikely if trash disposal was privatised because the trash disposal company would just sell it!

[Fel1x]

Here in Finland garbage collection is in private hands. For example in our building we can recycle almost anything you can imagine and because of that we have five different trucks coming each week. Recycling is considered a responsible thing to do and people might even brag about how they can recycle everything in their apartment building or vice versa complain how poor recycling opportunities they have in their building.