How about we make manufacturers responsible for disposing of the packaging and the product at the end of its lifecycle?
This will lead them to reduce the amount of waste they generate in a products life-cycle and will internalize the cost of waste disposal so the consumer pays their fair share up front rather than through taxes used for garbage collection and disposal.
Nanotech Labeling: Sprinkle nanotech labels on a product at the factory to identify exactly what the material is and who manufactured it. This would be very cheap and easy. Even if an item were smashed to pieces the labels would still adhere to all the pieces so tracking would not be lost. By identifying the material the item can be easily recycled into the raw materials stream. Tracking the manufacturer allows them to be billed for handling the waste.
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I give your idea a provisional 'for'. Sounds ideal, but I wonder about some of the details. Are such labels really technically feasible? How easy would they be to scan? If I put a bag of trash on the curb, can the garbage truck do the analysis: 1lb aluminum from Alcoa, 1lb plastic from GE, 2lbs paperboard from P&G, etc? What sort of new equipment or proceedures would have to be put into the garbage collection process?
Nanotech labelling sounds expensive. With RFID becoming more popular with retaillers and suppliers, wouldn't it be easier to determine a product's origin by it's RFID tag? It'd be a little easier to circumvent, but, hey - it would add less $$ to the cost of your weekly shopping. You might expect the extra cost you pay on goods to be offset by a reduction in taxes collected for garbage disposal, but let's face it: the government will continue to tax you at the same (or probably higher) rate in the future. Any savings on disposal will be mostly ploughed into policing and enforcing the new rules about manufacturers taking care of their own wastage, and if there is any saving left over, why on earth would the government pass that on to you when there's so much red tape they could spend it on?A nice idea, but I don't trust governments to lower taxes - even if they could do so easily.
But first ... how does someone become responsible for someone else's actions (in this case, disposal of some article)? I mean REGARDLESS of who the people are (beyond parents and minors) and what the actions are, how is that metaphysically possible? It's not, so why would you try to impose legal possibility on metaphysical impossibility?
If you take my pencil and stab the guy driving the recycling truck with it, am I responsible for the stabbing? Will we use a nanolabel to find me so I can be carted off to jail instead of you?
This is not the solution ...
What about putting these nano tech labels in spray paint and marker pens. If that paint or marker ink is later found on a wall in the form of grafitti the company which manufactured it could be traced and charged for the clean up costs.
Better still each pen or spray can has individual nano labels in them and when someone purchases these items their address is recorded against that nano label code. If the marker ink or spray paint is found on a wall as grafitti you can charge the owner for the cleanup cost and whether or not it was them or the kid who vandalised the wall it will teach them not to vandalise things and to keep the pens/spray paint out of the hands of their kids.
Design disposal or reuse into the product.
Change from "dispose" to reccycle and I will change from negative to roger that.