Garbage Tax

We have too much stuff. And it is not just me, it is the whole country. We have gotten so good at making things that we will buy a new one just to avoid having to clean an old one, or even worse, just because we are tired of the old one and want something new. Nothing wrong with that, it helps keep the economy going, but it leads to accumulations of stuff, and eventually someone is going to have to dispose of that stuff. Useful stuff you can sell, or give to Goodwill. Eventually though everything wears out and will have to be disposed of. I mean there are things that even Goodwill will not take.

I suggest we put a garbage tax on everything sold new. Everything: food, houses, cars, clothes, furniture, do-dads, knick-knacks, whatever. The tax rate would be very low, maybe one percent, maybe less. The money collected would be used to pay for garbage collection, sewers and recycling. Businesses could bid on providing these services. Companies that do a better job of disposing of stuff could make more money.

Dumps, instead of charging people, would pay people to dump their stuff there. Fringe benefit would be no more illegal dump sites, or least fewer. Why dump your trash by the side of the road when you can collect money for it at the dump?

I heard that some places in California (naturally, all the wacko ideas start in California) do not have separate recycling bins anymore. People dump everything in the trash containers and then garbage collection people sort the recyclables from the garbage. On one hand it sounds bizarre. Seems like it would be easier to deal with if it was sorted to begin with, but then there are people who cannot be bothered to separate the recyclable stuff from the garbage, or do it incorrectly. And then there are cases, like we had here in Oregon, where a whole bunch of stuff, some kind of plastic I think, was accumulated from our recycling program, but it ended up going to the landfill because there was no market for it. How many man hours went into recycling that plastic? First, the consumer has to separate it. Then the garbage collection company has to keep the plastic separate and then it has to be stored. A great deal of handling for something that turned out to be worthless.

Recycling only works when you can produce vast quantities of a material that there is a market for, and it only pays when you produce that material for less than people are willing to pay for it. Recycling can work, even if it does not pay directly, as there can be mitigating factors that our current business rules do not cover. Things like not sending material to the landfill so that it does not fill up as fast. Or using recycled material instead of new generates fewer emissions into the atmosphere or water.

I think we need a garbage tax levied on all new materials when they are sold.