Although many people and companies are finding ways to make recycling profitable, the cost of recycling can often be prohibitive. This results in the garbage of the western world (particularly USA) being shipped to developing countries where a small part of it is recycled, but much is disposed of irresponsibly by workers with low pay and poor working conditions (kids melting electronics boards over open fires to retrieve toxic heavy metals etc.) Why not add a certain cost to all goods that are difficult or problematic to dispose of, put that money into a national "Fate Fee" fund, and then when consumers are done with the produce (or wrapping) a tag/barcode, perhaps even a chip on the product, is used to identify the amount of the fee, so when it's taken, or collected by a responsible recycling company, the consumer gets a part of the Fate Fee back, and the recycling co. gets the rest. The fee would vary according to how difficult/costly it is to dispose of or recycle the material in an environmentally responsible way. Companies cashing in the Fate Fee tags must undergo periodic inspection to ensure they are indeed disposing/recycling responsibly, and not just shipping it to developing nations to be dumped with no controls. For example, your new computer monitor would cost $115 instead of $100, but at the end of its life a collector would pay you $5 for the monitor, and after the monitor is responsibly disposed of/recycled, the collector would cash in the tag for $10. This would spurn a new era of the old "Rag and Bone" collectors who used to make a profit from other's waste and pay a small fee for the waste. It may also make companies think about how much superfluous wrapping they put on a product, as the wrapping would have its own tag that would add to the product cost making it uncompetitive if it's over wrapped just to be appealing on the shelf.
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My state has a 'fate fee' for tire reclaimation, but as far as I know, they're still disposed of in the old manner. It amounts to a tax where the government gets the per-tire fee, but they're still trying to figure out what to do with the tires. Just free money for the gov.
I think if there's value in recycling, the market will find it. Forget the fate fee.
I sympathize with what sounds like a failed program by your state; however, a couple of comments (with respect):1) Do you know for sure that the $$ collected from the tire fate fee are not spent regulating the way tires are disposed of? Perhaps if this fee wasn't in place tire disposal service companies would be burning the tires in the open with no regulation in your area instead of shredding, burying them, or burninig them with emissions controls etc.2)If the above is not happening, what do you think would happen if your state put out an advertisement to entreprenures at large offering payment for responsible disposal or recycling of tires?
Finally, the idea is not to find value in recycling, in fact it states pretty clearly that some materials are not profitable to recycle or dispose of. The idea is to encourage the responsible disposal of materials, profitable or not, and recycling can be a good way to dispose of materials, but it's not always the best option. Sometimes recycling can cost more, monitarily and environmentally, than good, responsible disposal. I believe that the #1 way to reduce pollution from waste is to reduce consumption of difficult to dispose of or environmentally damaging materials. Thank you for your comments on this subject.