[robotkdick]

Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers.

Given the higher cost of other materials, changing consumer behavior (which is not easy, but it's happening right now, and achievable through further exposure and education) may be the only way to change producers' behavior.

While a tax seems like an easy fix, it may also cause the government to come to rely on income from plastic acting as a deterrent to law-making which discourages the use of plastics.

[delecti]

> While a tax seems like an easy fix, it may also cause the government to come to rely on income from plastic acting as a deterrent to law-making which discourages the use of plastics.

I don't know how common such a thing is, but in Washington state if a tax is labeled as a "fee", it must be earmarked for a specific purpose. If we put a "plastic fee" on products packaged with single-use plastics, and then mandated the raised funds be used to clean up plastic waste, that could be a good way to avoid that very likely outcome.

[Coincoin]

Then they are going to make the plastic package part of a cheap accessory for whatever they are selling. They are already doing that to boast the feature list of their products: "Practical widget holder included!"

[WalterBright]

I'd sell a plastics tax as revenue neutral, i.e. coupling it with a tax reduction on something else.

[ced]

> Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers.

That's the point: the higher the tax is, the more attractive the alternatives are.

[mverwijs]

And then governments will make so much money off of plastax (ha!) that they'll never ban it.

[savanaly]

>Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers.

This is not how it works. To what degree the tax gets "passed on to consumers" is based on relative elasticity of supply and demand in that market, not on the price of the good. You can read about it in absolutely any introductory microeconomics textbook.

[smallnamespace]

Yes, and in that same microeconomics textbook, it will introduce you to monopoly and oligopoly models that show that markets where there are relatively few parties in one side of a bargain generally have more pricing power (and it's rational for them to use it).

Consumers generally have less pricing power than the relatively fewer producers.

Also, in truly commoditized markets where there's a lot of competition, producers aren't making large profits either, a tax increase in the raw materials must eventually be passed on to the consumer, since producers that fail to raise prices will lose money and be forced to exit the market.

So no matter how you slice it, 'not passing on the cost increase' is just not very likely with clothing, it's mostly a question of how long the price adjustment will take since there is some stickiness in consumer preference.

[WalterBright]

Producers use plastic because it is the cheapest material that works for their use. Raise the price of plastic, and that equation changes.

[joejerryronnie]

Weight is also a major consideration in many applications.

[NeedMoreTea]

Simple. Raise the tax to a point that glass bottles, perhaps with deposit-return schemes, or cotton clothing is cheaper for the consumer than the synthetic equivalents.

Consumers will buy far more of the now cheaper and more sustainable products and producers who continue using plastic will declare profit warnings and some will become insolvent.

Isn't that's how it's supposed to work?

Governments survived losing income from cigarette taxation thanks to e-cigarettes.

[ripdog]

There are externalities to the switch to glass. For example, what about the extra carbon emissions from the extra diesel burn by the trucks shipping the ingredients for the glass to the glass factory, the raw glass to the bottling plants, and the bottled beverages to the supermarkets?

The extra weight of glass over plastic is significant. It's not an easy problem to solve. Hopefully truly compostable plastics will come along to save us, although they themselves emit gases when they decompose, and the additives may have food health risks.

[b1daly]

Or maybe truly reusable plastics could work? Some of the plastic bottles used for beverages seem remarkably strong for their weight.

[Johnny555]

Simple. Raise the tax to a point that glass bottles, perhaps with deposit-return schemes, or cotton clothing is cheaper for the consumer than the synthetic equivalents

But first, make sure you understand all of the environmental costs of alternatives to be sure you're not forcing people into an environmentally worse choice. Farming is not exactly a clean industry.

[NeedMoreTea]

Too true. Honestly at this point I wish there was a labelling requirement of the environmental and sustainability consequences of everything. Or that it was priced in to everything somehow. It's far too easy to make a very bad choice with the best of intentions.

[dflock]

A carbon tax is exactly that.

[Johnny555]

A carbon tax only taxes one small part of the full environmental impact of a product.

A synthetic shirt might have less carbon impact than a cotton shirt, but its plastic waste may be poisoning the oceans.

Or, as a made up example, coconut fiber shirt may have environmentally friendly organic degradable waste and a low direct carbon impact, while the demand for coconut caused millions of acres of native forest to be burnt down and replanted with coconut trees. Or maybe it caused the diversion of rivers for irrigation endangering fish and other ecosystems that relied on the rivers. Or maybe the newly planted trees displace food crops, leading to food shortages.

There are a lot of environmental externalities that are hard to account for, and some may not be known for years.

[dflock]

Very true.

However, it's _also_ true that "It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little."

[rhacker]

Are Carbon taxes really effective? Democrats get in, carbon taxes come with them. Republicans get in, carbon taxes leave with the democrats. I don't think taxes will ever solve this unless both sides see the issue.

[rrcaptain]

The US has never had a carbon tax, what are you talking about?

[WalterBright]

There are all kinds of alternatives to plastic. Just look at the world before 1968:

    Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you.
    Just one word.
    Benjamin: Yes, sir.
    Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
    Benjamin: Yes, I am.
    Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
    Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
    Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics.
    Think about it. Will you think about it?

For example, I just looked at my desk. There's a plastic package with 10 Dixon pencils in it. It could just as well be in a paper envelope.

[rrcaptain]

>changing consumer behavior (which is not easy, but it's happening right now, and achievable through further exposure and education)

Shifting the burden of plastic waste onto consumers is extremely naive and foolish. Consumers have very little power compared to multinationals that profit greatly off of plastic waste.