I tend to think that the person who buys the bottle and chooses to throw it away or recycle it has produced the waste, no one throws sealed bottles of Coca-Cola away.
If I buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, drink it then throw it out my car window, is Coca-Cola responsible for that bottle being swept into a storm drain and into a river? I don't think so.
Coca-Cola produces valuable goods, if you choose to take an action that results in the bottle floating out to sea, it's your fault, you don't get to blame Coca-Cola. That is what I mean by personal responsibility.
If my local recycling company sells bulk recycled plastic to an Asian commodity broker with the understanding that the plastic will be used to make new goods and the broker decides to dump the plastic in the ocean, is my local recycling company to blame for the plastic in the Ocean?
>Coca-Cola produces valuable goods, if you choose to take an action that results in the bottle floating out to sea, it's your fault, you don't get to blame Coca-Cola. That is what I mean by personal responsibility.
So in your ideal world it is 100% personal responsibility and 0% corporate responsibility, right?
"Phillip Morris produces valuable goods, if you choose to take an action that leads to your body growing a tumour, it's your fault, you don't get to blame Phillip Morris."
Corporations like Coca-Cola have successfully pushed the negative externalities of their product into the world we all have to live in, while keeping the profits.
That is correct, unless you did some due diligence and were fed incorrect information by a universally trusted authority, in that case you were deceived. You need to take personal responsibility until it becomes abundantly clear that you were duped into some behavior. You take responsibility for your own actions, you don't get to blame anyone. If you throw the bottle out the window, you polluted. The comparison to phillip morris is not apt, is Coca-Cola claiming plastic does not harm the environment, no they are not. Phillip Morris claimed smoking did not cause physical harm, very different.
Don't let yourself fall into a state of victimhood, where if you find your behavior producing outcomes that is not optimal you start looking for external forces to blame, you need to start taking responsibility for your own actions.
Glass bottles are more reusable and recyclable, but transporting glass burns more fuel. Reuse requires a lot of water to wash the bottles (though perhaps washing can be made more efficient) while remanufacturing crushed glass into bottles uses additional energy.
Still I'd be in favor of going back to glass because they are nicer than plastic and soda seems to taste better in glass bottles, perhaps in part because it doesn't have to be overcarbonated.
No I'm not splitting hairs at all. The local bottling companies have significant operational freedom. They could stop selling plastic bottles and only use glass or aluminum if they wanted to.
If I buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, drink it then throw it out my car window, is Coca-Cola responsible for that bottle being swept into a storm drain and into a river? I don't think so.
Coca-Cola produces valuable goods, if you choose to take an action that results in the bottle floating out to sea, it's your fault, you don't get to blame Coca-Cola. That is what I mean by personal responsibility.
If my local recycling company sells bulk recycled plastic to an Asian commodity broker with the understanding that the plastic will be used to make new goods and the broker decides to dump the plastic in the ocean, is my local recycling company to blame for the plastic in the Ocean?