[R0b0t1]

Nothing happens in a vacuum. You could very easily end up incentivizing worse behavior by misjudging what the externalities actually are and their impact.

Do you remember how telephone fraud with blue boxes was prosecuted? The stolen time was judged at full sale value of the minutes. But this doesn't make any sense, as if the call could not be placed for free it would not have happened, and if no one else was in line to place a call there was not lost revenue.

It seems like people are trying to do this with e.g. unrecycled plastics. Recycling is expensive likely because it is not economically productive, not because people are freeloading. The bar for showing otherwise should be very high.