The Time Has Come to Tax Trash in the US

Really, the time has long since come and gone that we need to tax trash.

Yes, tax trash.

Check out this one statistic:

In 2010, U.S. residents recycled 34% of their waste–an embarrassing amount compared to European countries like the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria, where people recycle almost all of their waste. In Sweden, people are so diligent about recycling that just 4% of all trash ends up in landfills...

We Americans figured, I think, we have all this space--quite unlike Europe--we don't have to care.

Well, we do have to care. The total municipal solid waste in 2012 alone was 251 million tons. (see link below). And that amount has surely risen greatly since then.

The time is now.

The more one throws away, the more you pay. It only makes sense. We need to do this.

In the first place, we throw away and waste far too much. We all know that. If we recycled only paper, aluminum and glass, alone, millions upon millions of pounds, if not tons, of products wouldn't go to waste dumps.

Second, surely we recognize we can no longer afford the soil, the Earth our waste dumps take up.

Third, there's the pollution it causes, the runoff into the soil and possibly into waterways. We have to recognize that--and that it must stop.

Then, there's the fact that it would be so very easy to do. And we could use the market economy to make this happen.

The smallest tax, employed to reduce this waste, would very likely have a huge,  positive effect.

And it's so simple. It's not like it wouldn't be understood.

The more your throw away, the more the hauler takes away, the more you pay. That's it. It makes far too much sense not to do this.

Can you imagine what we would save, what we would no longer waste, by doing this?

Think now about how much paper and plastic alone go into waste dumps just from corporate America--from the fast food industry alone.

We'd save the paper, we'd save the glass, we'd reuse the aluminum, all.

Then we'd be saving the land, saving our streams and saving forests.

No, this makes far, far too much sense.

We need to get on this.

Link:

 Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: Facts and Figures

McDonald's could be a much better corporate citizen--quickly and easily

 

A friend of mine goes to McDonald's each and every morning for breakfast and I've joined him at times (for the oatmeal, hold the brown sugar, thanks very much) so I've been reminded lately who they are and what they do. It had been some time--years, really--since I'd been in.

And a few things occurred to me.

The first is that how much each of them, separately, and then all of them, together end up putting into the waste dumps in the country and world daily and yearly.

Then, a great, easy, intelligent solution to it all also occurred to me.

All the McDonald's across the country need to institute plastic and paper recycling programs and as soon as possible.

If you think about it, everything they generate, from their meals, is either plastic or paper, right off those trays.

If they were to recycle all that, can you imagine the millions of pounds of both they could recycle each year?

It would be fantastic.

And the great thing about it is that it would be simple and easy for them to do.  Think about this. They have all those waste receptacles, already in their restaurants (using the word very loosely, no disrespect meant).  If they were simply and inexpensively labeled "Plastic" on one and "Paper" on the one next to it, the patrons could--again, quickly and easily--dispose of each in the respective container. Then, the employee whose job it is to keep up with the dining room could pull out those bags from the containers, collect them and have them placed in the restaurant for pickup.

So simple.  No additional cost, either, with the exception of the small signs needed.

Then, for McDonald's, what a public relations boon for them. Total win.  They could advertise that the people could come get the same food they always did and now, with this, it could also be a far greener experience.

Will it happen?

I doubt it.  I hope it but doubt it seriously.

It's got to start somewhere. 

This would be a great time and place.

Great irony--hypocrisy?--from the Airport Authority today

I just saw this, on Facebook, on the KCI Airport page. Check this out:

"Did you know that in 2012, the Kansas City Aviation Department recycled over 200 tons of materials? That is about the weight of 5 Boeing 737 aircraft!"

So, uh, Airport Authority, could we recycle the airport?

Please?

Rather than rather literally throwing it away?

I mean, come on.

Topsy-turvy

At some point, in a regular capitalistic business world, when someone doesn't any longer need a service or product, the product likely gets less and less expensive, as much as it can, until it no longer makes a profit, and it disappears. It goes out of business.

That's in the regular world.

In the government world, like in postage and the postal world, as computers come further into our lives and we email more and more and need the mail service less and less, the costs of these things just keep going further up and up.

It makes no sense.

The federal government needs to recognize the situation for what it is and ready the whole system to, one day, go out of business and go away.

Postage. Postage stamps. Postage meters. Mail-persons, mail trucks, the whole thing.

They need to plan for its disintegration.

Maybe not in 2 or 3 years but soon.

It only makes sense.

It's already begun.

People are mailing less and less all the time.

We'll benefit by this, too, as a society.

We'll use less paper and papers and envelopes--the whole thing.

It's going to get more and more expensive to use the regular paper mail system, as people use it less and less, because they're going to want to keep their profits as high as in the past, to keep the whole thing going.

And the more expensive it gets, the less people are going to use it. And computers, by comparison, are already falling in price terrifically.

And young people are going to use these new, much cheaper computers more and more and more, as we already know.

We need a plan to get rid of this United States Postal Service and up to now, we don't have one.

Mind you, it doesn't rank up there with saving our current economy but it would be good to tell them, if you're President, to get a plan.