The point is to increase the cost of the plastics to the point that alternatives start to actually be competitive. And really, we’re just making them actually pay for some of the externalities they’re getting a free ride on.
If you use government to increase the cost of a thing to the point alternatives become cheaper, most businesses are going to switch. They aren’t sticking with plastics out of ideology or anything… it’s just cheap. And it shouldn’t be.
We all pay for it anyway via the negative impacts. It should be the consumers buying the thing that pay for it. Why should society at large be paying for the negative impacts of a product not everyone is buying? Makes no sense. If your product is causing a big environmental impact, that needs to be paid for by the company making the product and the consumers buying it.
The point is to increase the cost of the plastics to the point that alternatives start to actually be competitive. And really, we’re just making them actually pay for some of the externalities they’re getting a free ride on.
If you use government to increase the cost of a thing to the point alternatives become cheaper, most businesses are going to switch. They aren’t sticking with plastics out of ideology or anything… it’s just cheap. And it shouldn’t be.
But it wouldn’t be making them pay for that because they would pass that cost onto the consumer as they always do.
And yeah, if they have to, they switch. To a more expensive material. And guess who pays for that?
We all pay for it anyway via the negative impacts. It should be the consumers buying the thing that pay for it. Why should society at large be paying for the negative impacts of a product not everyone is buying? Makes no sense. If your product is causing a big environmental impact, that needs to be paid for by the company making the product and the consumers buying it.