[xyzelement]

Product manager here - I suspect that zero waste is a weak/negative value proposition.

All of the "waste" costs someone something. Companies pay to make those bottles, boxes, etc.

The reason they do it is because it's still cheaper and more efficient than the alternative. Even at their scale.

So how do you make it valuable at your scale? How much of a premium are your customers going to pay to avoid a milk jug?

[bscphil]

> I suspect that zero waste is a weak/negative value proposition.

This is probably because the social / environmental cost of leaving all the trash you create in a landfill forever is an externality - you don't pay for it with your milk cartons and individually plastic wrapped potatoes. One way of thinking about the environmentalist movement is that it's an individualistic effort to price in one's own externalities, since American society more broadly is unable or unwilling to do this.

Of course broadly these efforts aren't going to solve the waste problem - if they could, manufacturers would not have the incentive to sell products this way - but there will always be a niche market for this sort of thing.

[rcme]

Are landfills really an externality? You pay for them through property taxes. They're regulated not to leech harmful chemicals into the environment. Their harmful emissions, like methane, generally come from food waste, which has nothing to do with the landfill itself.

[bscphil]

The property tax you pay doesn't cover the externalities of the landfill - it pays for trash pickup and (roughly) opportunity cost for the land being used as landfill, as well as landfill maintenance required by regulations.

Probably the biggest externality here is the environmental cost of producing all the single use plastic containers in the first place, but the landfill itself will have externalities too.

Eventually, the rate of semi-permanent waste creation by humans on Earth will have to equilibrate with the rate at which semi-permanent waste is absorbed by the environment. Otherwise, the amount of waste would continue to increase indefinitely. We can certainly go a very long time at our current rate of waste creation, which is why the costs to future-people isn't included in the price. But those costs are real, and potentially include making sure chemical leeching doesn't occur over hundreds or thousands of years, not just decades.

[rcme]

> But the landfill itself will have externalities too.

Such as? As I mentioned, landfills are already regulated to prevent leeching harmful byproducts into the environment and many of the harmful things produced by landfills that do escape, e.g. methane, isn't really specific to the landfill itself.

[asdajksah2123]

There is no signaling mechanism to indicate their cost to the consumer.

Your entire block might switch to zero waste and would likely see no reduction in their property taxes (any reduction would probably simply reduce the local government's deficit).

[rcme]

Local governments don’t generally run deficits (in the US). And there definitely is a price signaling mechanism. If trash becomes more expensive to dispose of, that cost is passed on to consumers via higher taxes.

[akira2501]

> There is no signaling mechanism to indicate their cost to the consumer.

Where is this true? In every jurisdiction I've ever lived in trash service has been private and I've had to pay for it myself. The service fee is based on volume of trash container. I've always had direct feedback on trash disposal costs.

[bravo22]

There is no limit on the waste, and therefore no market. It is an arbitrary price placed by politicians. Imagine if oil prices were not dicated by a market and a by a production cartel rather by politicans in the US.

[bradleyjg]

One way of thinking about the environmentalist movement is that it's an individualistic effort to price in one's own externalities, since American society more broadly is unable or unwilling to do this.

Nah. If this was what was going on we’d expect to see a lot more substitutions, offsets, and so on.

Instead the focus seems to be on personal virtue vis-a-vis the environment and particularly public demonstrations of personal virtue, rather than in maximizing effectiveness.

For example, why is residential rooftop solar being built out in the Pacific Northwest?

[xyzelement]

I totally get that. The question is - will enough people give a shit / buy in.

[michaelt]

> The reason they do it is because it's still cheaper and more efficient than the alternative.

There's actually a different reason they don't do it: Reusable containers make for a difficult business plan, because it's the reverse of a new-customer discount if you have to charge for the reusable container.

This makes it tough to, for example, start a takeaway using reusable stainless steel containers.

[asdff]

Why not offer it for free? My grocery store gave me free reusable bags when I signed up with their rewards program. They give me a few dozen dollars off a month in savings, I reward them by doing the bulk of my grocery buying there. We all win still.

[Psychlist]

Because people will find another use for the reusable containers, then just take as many as you let them.

What works more often is an explicit deposit, or a pay-for-return. I buy cleaning stuff from a local wholesaler who will pay a few dollars for each 20 litre container returned, a little more if it has a tap, and about $10 for a 200 litre drum (which I can also buy cleaned from a second hand drum dealer for $15).

But when you're talking about a 500ml dishwashing detergent bottle there's not enough value in the bottle to make it worth setting up a return and reuse system. If you get down into plastic bags it's complete nonsense, even for single-material (ie, non-food) bags at less than a cent each. In NSW we have a 10c fee per bag to discourage their use and even that is not enough to cover the cost of recovering and downcycling those bags (our downcycling scam just collapsed: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-17/recycle-collapse-proo...)

Look at the economics of milk bottle returns, for example. My parents pay ~10c/time to buy milk in glass bottles on top of the ~50c deposit on each bottle. People where they are do that because they intensely dislike plastic bottles and have the spare money to pay extra for milk.

[asdajksah2123]

> The reason they do it is because it's still cheaper and more efficient than the alternative. Even at their scale.

That's not the only reason. Consumer convenience can also be a factor why things are done in a certain way.

Status quo bias is also huge, especially since consumers will be more difficult to change than a handful of companies.

Also, new technology, such as cheaper and more accurate sensors, scales, printers, anti-theft tech, etc. may make something more feasible when it might not have been even a few months ago.

Finally, consumer preference and education are also important. Zero waste buying, for example, would require consumers to (a) recognize there is massive waste in their lives, (b) recognize alternative ways are possible, (c) be willing to change to the alternative way, which they might resist even if it's better. For most companies, the cost/risk of this education may not be worth it. But it's possible that there is far greater awareness among consumers about (a) and (b) today than ever before, so the costs are now feasible.

[nine_k]

It just does not work equally well with every product, but it works with some.

I keep seeing farmers selling stuff like apples, potatoes, etc on greenmarkets from large reusable plasic or wooden crates. If I bring my own bags, I produce no packaging waste.

It's a bit harder with things like milk, but should be doable using large multi-use cans and pouring into customer's bottle.

Likely packaging waste can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated completely, for things like bread, cookies / crackers / etc, eggs, sausages, butter, etc. Just use large reusable / recyclable containers, and parcel out the amounts needed for a customer.

It of course is not going to work well with stuff that requires special packaging at the point of production, like carbonated drinks.

The biggest problem is the lack if self-service in much if this; a salesperson should measure, weigh, cut or otherwise dispense things, and this is slower than scanning bar codes. Pre-packaged goods even allow self-checkout.

[asdff]

Ironically, we used to literally do it with milk a generation or two ago. You'd get milk in glass bottles, drink it, leave it outside in the evening, bring in more milk in the morning in reused glass bottles, and the bill is in the mail. Today with expensive glass bottled milks, they sometimes still offer a few cents redemption if you return the empty bottles to the store.

[Psychlist]

Some places have gone back to milk in glass bottles: https://www.oaklandsfarm.co.nz/home-delivery

It's expensive but it's doable. Or you could say that the plastic milk people have successfully externalised enough of their costs that they can charge less than a more efficient option. Somehow producer levies to cover waste disposal are uncommon and wildly unpopular (with producers).

[ricardobeat]

Plenty of stores selling in bulk allow self-service. Customer weights their own container, prints a barcode.

[oh_sigh]

Perhaps a lot. I live in Boulder and a number of wealthy moms in my social group are all into zero waste, or minimizing waste to the point where they will pay $10-15/gallon for milk. It also helps to justify the price that the milk is sourced locally, because these people are usually cognizant of the carbon footprint from shipping as well.

[lotsofpulp]

Assuming those wealthy Boulder moms live in detached single family homes with individual cars, I wonder how much additional carbon footprint of that lifestyle is compared to living in an apartment.

I suspect it is orders of magnitude more than local milk in zero waste packaging compared to what you get at Costco.

[oh_sigh]

A lot of Boulder homes are relatively small because they were built in the 40s-60s for a population with much more modest means. So it isn't rare to see millionaires living in a 1300 SQ ft ranch style home, and driving EVs or riding bakfiets style bikes around toting kids.

So, probably still more carbon intensive than city dwellers, but not necessarily as bad as other forms of suburban lifestyles, and that doesn't mean their efforts are for naught.

[asdffdsa]

I am willing to pay a decent markup (2x the cost)

[positr0n]

Surely you could make a far greater environment impact by donating $50 to a conservation or carbon credit charity instead of spending $100 on $50 worth of groceries that have less plastic in their supply chain.

[Psychlist]

The cost of diverting plastic from the waste stream is high, the cost of recovering it once it becomes litter is higher, and the cost of getting it out of the ocean is dollars per kilogramme. And once we have it the best option we have is either melting into lumps of generic plastic to use as weights, or shipping it to Sweden to be burned to generate electricity (only place that does this AFAIK, and I wouldn't trust anyone in the US or Australia if they wanted to).

[ricardobeat]

None of these will reduce the amount of plastic going into the environment. There is no “offsetting” plastic.

[selectodude]

I will gladly pour a gallon of milk into a bucket for you $4.00. Tell me when and where.

[richhomiepran]

I need to figure this out sir.