Green Capitalism - Waves of the Future
Climate Change, Non-Renewable Resources, Energy, Contaminants, Carbon Pricing...Creating a Green Economy
The Recycling, Reuse, and Packaging Component of the Green Economic Environment (GEE)
Because packaging is mostly single use, it needs to be targeted aggressively by any meaningful environmental strategy.
Most other goods are used over and over again and much less wasteful in comparison. The GEE would tax raw materials and unenvironmental packaging to increase their price.
This would lead to conservation and boost markets for recycled materials, which would then become more profitable.
The system would be revenue-neutral and compensated for by a decrease in other types of taxation (e.g. on income and retail sales). See also Book II of the Waves of the Future Series
Henderson's structural approach--the Green Economic Environment (GEE)--would use regulation to standardize containers like bottles and jars into fewer formats. This would make them more reusable and improve the economics of cleaning and reprocessing.
The GEE would use revenue-neutral taxation to increase the cost of new inputs (raw materials) used in the fabrication of containers. This would make new containers more expensive, but consumers would pay lower income and retail taxation in compensation.
More expensive packaging would promote conservation, a shift to greener alternatives, and increase the amount of recycling.
Recycled materials would be not be taxed as inputs. This would make them cheaper and more profitable, which would promote
the growth of the industry as well as recycling.
Appropriate taxation levels would eventually create natural markets for recyclables and lead to a thriving industry that would no longer need to be supported by taxpayers.