Why don’t we just require everything to be made out of clear PET?
Like, seriously. Why are we allowing plastic companies to produce millions of pounds of barely recyclable crap?You know what’s even more recyclable? Glass.
Only around 25% of PET plastic is recycled anyway (In the USA), so I don’t think that will help.
Green washing. Carbon credits don’t work either.
I understand there are many problems with buying your way toward fixing pollution instead of actually eliminating or reducing it. Especially when there’s limited oversight on the paid organizations. This is not solving the problem and is not a long term solution. The greenwashing aspect is real.
But is this not a step in the right direction? It’s taking some profits and turning the funds toward environmental cleanup. It’s a company taking some level of responsibility over the harm caused AND actually putting resources toward it.
It seems logical that the next step is to avoid this expense, which could potential lead to actually curbing plastic waste or carbon emissions. By including this damage as a true cost to the business, it then incentivizes taking action to prevent the expense itself.
Right now it’s about as useful as the 10 cents for a plastic bag thing. Tiny inconvenience and everyone does it anyway.
The penalty needs to be at least 10 times more if we want companies to even notice.
Having a framework people are participating in to pay for the lifetime costs of plastic is an enormous step in the right direction.
The article is describing the many ways people are filling in the blanks in the early stages of this global endeavor. On the whole I would say there is a lot of positive energy for it.
I wish this very essential watchdog type of article could make clear that the results it reports are not unexpected and hopeless and damning of the whole concept, but rather normal learning curve for regulating an enormous industry in new ways. Skeptical, but constructive and understanding that you rely on other people to get this work done and don’t actually know how to do it all yourself so to some extent you have to wait and see what others come up with.
If you have to ask the question, don’t you already know the answer?
