
Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and PepsiCo are the Top Plastic Polluters - elorant
https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/coca-cola-nestle-pepsi-top-plastic-polluters/
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eloff
I'm going to beat this drum again. When you have a product with negative
externalities, like plastic packaging or fossil fuels, price those into the
product through a tax. Then, for bonus points, take that tax revenue and put
it towards incentivizing greener solutions. The market will then solve your
problem remarkably quickly and efficiently. Markets are fantastic, but they
don't account for externalities so we need to add that in through regulation
to keep a level playing field.

~~~
haecceity
Internalizing the costs would make the commodities much more expensive. But
expensive sugar drinks is better for our health.

~~~
eloff
And expensive plastic and oil is good for the environment. Conversely cheaper
things with positive externalities, like vaccinations would also be
beneficial.

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buildzr
Consumers are the top plastic polluters on the planet. These products aren't
without demand.

~~~
bromuro
Demand is created by these same companies.

~~~
arcanus
The tail does not wag the dog. Consumers must take responsibility for their
collective actions.

Blaming evil megacorps for all of societies ills is neither productive nor
ultimately correct.

~~~
bromuro
Look around - simple people (like me) can’t do much against masses of
psychologists that in the last 50 years studied how to trick the human brain.

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cascom
First of all the people that throw the trash in the river/sea are the
polluters.

Second the question is whether their products are disproportionately
represented in the sample sets

~~~
Pfhreak
Except that doesn't tell the whole story. You can toss a plastic bottle in a
trash bin and still have it end up in the rivers. Animals get into bins all
the time. Along with imperfect collection mechanisms -- bin too stuffed? A
bottle or two falls out of the garbage truck? Landfill exposed to the
elements?

Relying on humans to do the right thing with the bottles is a good intentions
solution. And in tech, at least, we don't like good intentions solutions. If
relying on good intentions worked, we'd already have solved the problem
because people already have good intentions.

Instead, we need to make it impossible to do the wrong thing. How do we make
it impossible for plastic bottles to end up in the river? One way is to stop
making plastic bottles.

~~~
kamakazizuru
additionally - even with the best intentions (in Germany for example, we have
a great deposit based system where you return bottles for recycling / reuse at
your local supermarket and get the deposit back) - it turns out that recycling
just does not work as it should. DW (1) recently did an expose which showed
that significant amounts of plastic that's sent through the recycling process
actually ends up in south east asia (many companies are now banning this) -
where it ends up getting burned / dumped into the ocean etc.

If we stopped it at the source - and forced these companies to spend a
fraction of their massive revenues into innovating around more sustainable
alternatives (effectively just pricing in the externality that they are
currently getting a free ride on). You'd end up with a much better scenario
where consumers can still enjoy the products and don't even have to deal with
the cognitive overload of sorting 12 different types of waste.

I think one of the biggest coups that governmentes & corporations have pulled
off is to let the burden of environmentally friendliness get shifted to the
end consumer. This means that it requires masses of people to first get
informed, then get mobilized and then start boycotting or putting pressure on
these companies to change something. Pretty wasteful cycle if you ask me,
easier to price it in much earlier at the source.

(1) [https://www.dw.com/en/dumping-plastic-waste-on-
others/av-494...](https://www.dw.com/en/dumping-plastic-waste-on-
others/av-49451092)

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merricksb
Discussed previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21373401](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21373401)

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lwb
> 43% of collected plastic was marked with a clear consumer brand, like Coca-
> Cola or PepsiCo. Break Free From Plastic blames our “throwaway culture,” for
> much of the consumer waste. They argue that this throwaway mindset is at the
> core of many companies’ business model.

Looks like they didn't verify that Coca-Cola et al were the ones actually
doing the polluting?

