I think the most important measure we could take is making manufacturers responsible for the products they create. In Sweden, for example, computer manufacturers have to take back any product they produce.

Why is this important? Toxic products are cheap if you don’t have to worry about where the waste goes, but when the company that produces it must also dispose of it, and the costs of dumping toxic waste are not subsidized (in other words taxpayers don’t build landfills that take waste at a subsidized rate), the cost of disposal gets built into the cost of production.

At that point, toxic products start to get priced correctly instead of getting subsidies from taxpayers. That gives companies huge incentives to make their products compostable or upcyclable (so the waste actually has value).

Clearly you’re right that this will be a long process, but I do think that the first step is eliminating indirect subsidies to producers who use toxic processes and create toxic products.

That of course can’t get you all the way, I and guess a truly workable solution requires some sort of remediation technology that can detect and remove toxins that get added in secondary ways, such as when someone sprays upholstery with a toxic cleaner.

Another issue for places like the United States is the definition of toxic itself. In the European Union, the standard is for companies to demonstrate that a substance is safe. In the US, it is up to consumers and regulatory agencies to demonstrate that a substance is unsafe. The US will eventually become the dumping ground for toxic materials because China and India are in the process of adopting EU standards.

So we now face the situation where phtalates were detected in a shipment of toys to Poland (I think it was Poland) and were rejected for import. Since those toys were also illegal for sale on the Chinese domestic market for the same reason, there was only one place they could, and did, go: the United States.

So to answer your questions, I would say we need

– tougher standards for judging safety/toxicity

– companies must take their own products back or otherwise be forced to build disposal costs into the price.

– disposal costs should no longer be subsidized.

I guess the problems with those solutions are that

– Kelloggs can’t be taking back every cereal box, so there has to be a way to deal with that. That one’s easy (compostable boxes), but others are not so easy to figure out.

– if consumers are charged true costs of disposal, they may engage in bandit dumping.

Tough questions for sure.

[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ‘659147275 which is not a hashcash value.

1. How are we going to keep track of the upcyclable products? The market place is full of toxic products and how should the consumer know where to put his (perhaps) upcyclable product?

2. How do we know whether an upcyclable product has been polluted in its 10 years use as upholstery in a car? All kinds of toxic substances could have been spilled on it.

Untill litterally all products have been turned into upcyclable or compostable miracles these two questions will have to be delt with in some way or the other.