So I read this column today and I thought it hit the nail square on the head. You may, of course, disagree.
We consumers, by the product and disposal choices we choose, share a large role in the responsibility for either trashing or enhancing the environment we live in and that we will bequeath to future generations.
But don’t our corporations have some degree of social responsibility also? In this day and age, knowing what we know, is it proper for companies to develop and produce new products (like those mentioned in the column below) that will have clear adverse affects on the environment, when other less ruinous products are already available? Is this an example of the “innovation” that everyone seems to think will keep America the number one country in the world?
Really, there wasn’t any need for most, if not all of the products mentioned in the column. Yet companies went forward anyway, developing or copying each other, while surely counting on the usual slick marketing and free samples to be able to convince American consumers that regular throw-away products make more sense than reusable ones. IMO, I hope consumers will not buy these products and they will fail miserably in the market.
Is there any practicable way to temper our corporations quest for profit AT ANY ENVIRONMENTAL COST? What if new products that were judged to be unduly stressful to the environment were denied favorable tax status? What if all research, development and marketing costs for such products could not be deducted on a corporate tax return? Would that help to encourage environmentally responsible development?
What are you, some kind of hippie who uses linen diapers and doesn’t use plastic bags for their purchase of Tylenol?
More importantly, this leads to more spending.
Normally, you would buy one cheaply manufactured POS plastic brush with some bristles every few years, at best. Now, you get to buy special super duper chemical-laden disposable brushes every few WEEKS. They’re turning a rare and cheap purchase into a constant purchase. The magic of consumables. (I’d lump in Swiffer with all these, but Swiffer is actually useful).
It is this kind of “disposable” trend that leads us into trouble. Well, will lead us into trouble. Disposable cameras, disposable toilet brushes, disposable everything. Use it once, throw it away, buy more. Let the trash pile up. Put more money into the companies’ pockets.
Continuing the week-long trend of bashing Libertaria, this is it - companies are not responsible, they can not self-regulate, and they do not act in the best interests of consumers.
I just KNEW China, India, Indonesia, et al, were behind this in some way! You see, if they couldn’t make products so cheap with their cheap labor costs and availability, then we wouldn’t be so inclined to throw stuff away. So yet another reason why outsourcing/offshoring is bad for us (and the world). So there! All you free traders can put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Language that further anthropomorhizes corporations disturbs me a little. The prevalence of such idioms is prob’ly due to how our language is built I suppose. I don’t think that ‘our corporations have some degree of social responsibility.’ Corporations are, after all, just some ideas held in agreement and recorded on paper. There’s no entity besides the people, the natural persons, of the corporations. Corporations each have their own mission statements. This is what corporations are responsible for- the pursuit of their missions. The people who are party to the corporation have responsibilities for the corp’s conduct.
Why not go the other route and offer incentives for green items rather than punishments for the notably less green ones?
Can we say tax cuts? The less government involvement the better.
With punishments, the gov has the job of enforcement. The onus of showing that the taxee owes extra is added to the gov’s already overwhelming burdens. This costs more money and manpower than the use of incentives.
With incentives, the burden of proof is incumbent upon the taxee. The taxee has to show that it complied with the criteria for the tax break. The taxee conducts the tests and investigations, fills out the forms, and saves the reciepts on their own time on their own tab. The people who benefit directly from the tax break are the ones who provide the bulk of the manpower and money.
The most common problem I have with many sorts gov regulation of fyog measures is that if individuals cannot be trusted to regulate themselves, how can they be trusted to regulate someone else? Everybody involved is people.
Well of course it is the people who run the corporations that I was referring to. I thought that would be a given and not necessary to define separately.
I’m not sure what other incentives we could give corporations. They are already paying near the the lowest taxes, both in amount and effective rate since 1930. All research and development expenses are already deductible. Somebody has to pay the fare for the services the country expects and demands.
While I like your incentive idea, I wouldn’t be happy with this unless and until corporations paid more taxes. In other words, this incentive needs to be net zero in cost to the government and individual taxpayers. Let the companies earn the incentive or pay a social penalty through higher taxes.
Nothing we can do about that until HAL takes over…
Reusing cloths and brushes and sponges is filthy. That’s why most kitchen sinks are thick with bacteria, and why bacteria are smeared all over kitchen countertops. Throw-away wipes are far more hygenic.
This is a good example of market failure. There are significant enviromental costs associated with these sorts of products, but the enviromental costs are borne by everyone, not the producer or consumer. Effectively this means that enviromentally damaging products are subsidised, leading to overproduction of them.
The best solution IMO would be some kind of eco-tax, which varies depending on how enviromentally damaging the product is. Ideally the eco tax would add enough to the cost of the good to exactly reflect the external enviromental costs of its production and consumption. In practice of course this would be impossible, but i’m sure some sort of figure could be estimated and that could be used as the basis for the tax. This would have to be some sort of global effort though, at the very least world trade rules would have to be amended to allow the eco tax to be applied to imported goods.
There are problems with this approach of course. The difficulty of setting the right level of eco tax. Problems of enforcement. Potential for abuse of eco-tax on imported goods to circumvent trade rules on protectionism. The cost of administering the scheme. However in my view these problems and cost would be massively outweighed by the benefit of price incentives that more accurately reflect the total (private + social/external) costs of production.
I don’t know if you are really serious or not but your whole world is covered by bacteria. YOU are covered by bacteria. There are mites crawling in you in your hair follicles. Everything you touch is covered by bacteria. Disposal wipes make absolutely no difference in the big picture. Believing otherwise means you are a victim of corporate marketing.
I know that bacteria are everywhere, but most of them are harmless. But the concentration of bacteria in the kitchen is sometimes thousands of times greater than even the toilet, and much of them are harmful.
It’s not so bad if it’s disposable if the products were made to be recyclable. Say, 75% as a ballpark figure. Kodak, for example, claims that 60% of all disposable cameras are recycled and apparently their recycling center will take any brand of disposable camera, just not Kodak. Unfortunately, I cannot find a cite with the amount of recyclable material in a disposable camera, and I do not currently have one with me.
I’m amazed at the survival of any of my cousins who grew up on farms in the 1920’s and 30’s surrounded by animals and their, ahem, byproducts.
You haven’t seen filth until you have seen a 1930’s barnyard in the spring after the thaw starts and before the ground frost leaves.
And if you watched cows being milked at that time you would never have touched their milk. The thing most cows did best was, when the pail was about half full of milk, hunch up in preparation for relieving themselves. Your action was to grab the pail and milking stool and try to get away from the splash. And the coefficient of splash of cow excrement is something to behold.
Reasonable precautions are one thing. The disposable stuff with all the bacteria is still around unless you put them in a sealed container, but they have to be transported there by you. You really need to wear protective clothing which is burned after each use.
Face it. There is no escape other than living in the highest quality clean room and having everything delivered and taken away via disinfecting air locks.
Our immune system is the best defense and it needs to be kept up to snuff by living dangerously.
Lick that counter top once a day at least once a day.
Oh, I agree with you. All I commented on was the notion that reusing sponges and brushes is somehow intrinsically superior to using throw-aways. It isn’t.
Why do you asssume that Americans are especially bad? In fact, the U.S. is one of the cleanest countries around. China uses twice as much energy per GDP dollar. Canada uses more energy per capita than the U.S. U.S. power plants and factories are cleaner than most in the world. The U.S. spends more money and effort cleaning up the environment, promoting recycling, planting trees, and otherwise caring for the environment than most other countries.
It’s true that the U.S. uses a lot of resources and creates a lot of waste, but it also creates a lot of wealth and products that are used around the world. A more fair comparison would be to compare U.S. energy use and waste production as a percentage of GDP, and on those terms the U.S. is actually pretty good.
And some people, like Becky Norton Dunlop, who was for a time Virginia’s Secretary of Natural Resources, say that the biggest polluter in the US is the federal government. She documents her battles with the EPA in her book, “Cleaning the Air”. Unfortunately, we might never know for sure because the Community Right to Know Act exempts government from having to report its emissions.
My view has alwasy been that earth has limited resources, and will be destroyed one day anyway (colision, He Fusion, whatever - the earth must die). We must use the resources to find ways to leave this planet and explore this solar system, and eventually head out to the stars. To this end we need the most efficient distrubuition of resources - up to this day that has been capitalism.
