Also: The Simpsons!
I really love this concept but question its potential without some toothy legislation to support it. Truman’s sends cleaning supplies via Fedex or UPS in a cardboard box which you refill with concentrates that they also send you – via similar albeit smaller chipping containers. I heard the product described as “only slightly more expensive than the better cleaning products you get in the store.” I will add that they are also significantly less convenient.
If the question is feeling good about our personal footprint, these green (ish) but inconvenient products may allow us, affluent societally-conscious city-dwellers, to do something and send the right message to our children, but most Americans cannot afford to pay many times more than dollar-store prices, and jump through a bunch of hoops, to attain one-percenter benefits.
On the other hand, if the question is reducing the amount of waste society creates, the right answer is to support reusability with meaningful garbage collection fees calculated by usage – in other words, charge people for what they throw away. This would require an entirely new model for waste management. Garbage cans or trucks might need scales and geometric volume scanners for calculating each house’s waste. If you throw away a lot of stuff, you are going to pay a lot of money. If you reuse and repurpose everything (don’t get me started on recycling), you could pay close to nothing. Sounds like a fun home-ec game to play with the family, and it offers real cash prizes!
Of course there are the political obstacles. The exact same politicians who would hop all over the green elements of this concept would oppose its regressive taxation appearance. Regressive taxation is one that hurts poor people and is insignificant to rich people. But that too is manageable if collection rates vary by neighborhoods with lower rates in poor neighborhoods and exorbitant rates in rich neighborhoods (similar to property taxes). The program only works if everyone feels it when they don’t comply, so it would need to feel relatively expensive to everyone across the spectrum.
I am a firm believer that government should stay out of the way of self-interest. But where government is effective and needed is in preventing people from pursuing self-interest that harms others (that’s why we have police and courts for example). I think garbage creation – as necessary as it is – can fit this category. And who knew there were so many great Simpson’s GIFs about garbage!
A Card Carrying Centrist 