6 ms·
This is actually the popular opinion, world wide. It's what we've been doing for decades. And it's terrible. The really unpopular opinion is "let's generate le
by mngnt 3y ago
This is actually the popular opinion, world wide. It's what we've been doing for decades. And it's terrible.
The really unpopular opinion is "let's generate less trash and reuse everything we can, plus slap a recycling tax on everything".
- eimrine 3y agoWhat is the difference between recycling taxes and regular ones?
- ustolemyname 3y agoThis is challenging to answer with the nonspecific, "regular ones?" What, to you, is a "regular tax?" Payroll taxes? Income taxes? Property taxes? Sales taxes? Carbon taxes? Gas taxes? Cigarette taxes? All are as dissimilar to recycling taxes as they are to each other.
- anticensor 3y agoThey mean direct taxes, as opposed to indirect ones.
- mngnt 3y agoI would envision it as a money that don't go to the general pile of tax-raised money which becomes the country's government budget, but be kept separate and be used for investments in recycling and environemtn protection. I am not a lawyer and have no idea if this is a thing anywhere, but it seems so logical. You raise money off an ecological problem and use them, directly, to solve the ecological problem (and others).
- eimrine 3y ago> the country's government budget It just will not work, countries are not interested in keeping the planet clean from plastic and from greenhouse gas. It must be on international level.
- midoridensha 3y agoWhy is it terrible? The OP said to burn what you can for electricity, so that really should just leave metals. Copper is valuable, so hopefully they'd strip all the wiring and recycle it, leaving just steel and maybe aluminum (which itself is valuable for recycling too). How is dumping steel car frames in the ocean "terrible"? These days, entire ships are sunk (after getting all the fluids out of them) to actually help the ocean wildlife as artificial reefs. However, I do agree there should be a lot more effort to recycle this stuff.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago>after getting all the fluids out of them Stripping the toxic elements out of a car isn't trivial, especially so in a place as poor as Tonga.
- mngnt 3y agoBurning plastic/paper/other packaging gets you a lot of toxic stuff in the atmosphere. I know there are filters and processes and whatnot, but it just feels wrong and smelly. Aluminium recycling actually works great, recycled aluminium is 95% less energy expensive and some 75% of aluminium comes from recycling. (1) Steel could also be recycled like that, I guess ships are a lot more difficult to cut apart and melt down than cars, because they are heavier and larger (citation needed). At any rate, we put a lot of resources and energy into the steel for cars, maybe we should use that steel as much as possible instead of putting more energy into more steel. (1) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling
- midoridensha 3y agoI see now. I misunderstood: I thought you were saying that dumping the remaining steel shells in the ocean was terrible for the ocean. Yeah, burning all that stuff is terrible.
- mngnt 3y agoI meant it in a more systemic way. Getting rid of waste is always worse then reducing ir reusing.
- wkat4242 3y agoIt is but on the scale of this island it's a drop in the ocean ;) All the car wrecks combined would be like one sunk ship.