"Why stop there" is often a reason why nothing gets done. Why do small if you can go big right away? Because going big right away is costly (in social cost, in convincing, in how much people need to change behavior, ...) and that prevents people from doing it in the first place because the threshold is high. Apathy is the result. Better to take a small step first, then get used to the measure / the cost, then have a next phase where you do more.

Everybody makes fun of paper straws. Or they made fun of wind power when it was barely 0.1% of energy production. Why not immediately demand 20 years ago that all single use plastic is banned? Or that only wind and solar are allowed? Because the step is too big, it would not be accepted. You need to take one step at a time.

That's even a viable strategy against procrastination. There is this big daunting task. So much to do! Oh my, better scroll a little tiktok first. No, just take a small first step of the task. Very small, no big commitment. Then maybe do some tiktok, but the little first step won't be too much. Result is, you have an immediate sense of accomplishment and actually made progress, maybe even stay hooked with more steps of the ultimately big task.

> more or less every non-durable product manufacturer (say, lifespan less than 5 years) should be required to take the product back at end of life and dispose of it properly

Yeah, we had that. Glass milk bottles and coke bottles and bulk goods sold out of barrels by the lb rather than in plastic bags.

But then plastic took off and soon after Big Sugar paid a PR/lobbying firm to run a campaign with a fake Indian crying a single tear and calling every Tom Dick and Harry a “litterbug” and now the pile of garbage is our fault, not the manufacturers.

Switzerland has something like this for "eWaste", it's called the ARC [1] (Advance Recycling Contribution). For any electronic device you purchase a small tax is collected and used for the recycling and collection of the future waste it will generate.

The collection mandatorily happens in the shops that sell electronic devices, you don't have to return them to the exact store where it was purchased, as long as they sell similar devices they cannot refuse to take it back (without paying anything more). It works pretty well, even if shop owners/workers aren't always pleasant when you return something.

[1] https://www.erecycling.ch/en/privatpersonen/blog/vRB-Vorgezo...

Go further. Every product must be returned to manufacturer at end of life.

Any items found by garbage program will be collected and returned to manufacturer at cost.

All items sold in country must be identifiable for this purpose. Importers are considered the manufacturers and must retrofit products.

Then we would be getting closer to capturing the total burden to society.

Trash piles is one way the actual cost of things is obfuscated and punted to future generations.

A lot of people wouldn’t want this because it’s asking for stuff to become more expensive for them.

It will raise the costs and the prices, people will be unhappy and this will result in far-right populist parties taking over.

I’m reading ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan’s Weisman. Last thread like this had someone recommend it (thanks!).

Every bit of plastic humans have made still exits, bar a small amount we have burnt.

That’s concerning.

Mechanism design for better trash economics is hard for the same reasons that making a good linearly typed programming language is hard.

I'm not kidding :)

Why is trash an "enormous externality"? Even if the retailer took it back it would still be... trash.

Because it has to start somewhere.

Also many countries collect disposable plastic.

Yes let’s burden any fledging company with the added bureaucracy of having to set up trash collection, disposal and recycling.