I would bet its globally more optimal to have all trash sorted and cleaned and recycled at a plant than to have each individual in every household do a poor job of it themselves.
I tend to agree with this although I haven't done all of the math.
It seems however that their might be a net social good to create a recycling industry which consists of living accomodations, facilities for sorting, facilities for cleaning, and facilities for reconstituting bulk goods out of recyclable material, and then a set of factories that would use that to create 50 - 100% post consumer products for sale in the general market.
The purpose of these economic units would be three fold, one it would provide housing and an income to anyone who was willing to work and it would not require a lot of pre-requisites for the work. Second it would reduce the landfall load and burdened cost of recycling by minimizing transportation costs while effectively recycling. And lastly it would provide a stream of goods and bulk materials for industry that would provide a means to offset some if not all of the cost of the operation.
As a government sponsored activity I feel it could simultaneously provide living accommodations and meaningful work for a large chunk of the homeless population and an even larger fraction of the post-felony population.
But seriously, why should businesses get to externalise the costs of disposal of the junk they make? Just make businesses responsible for the life cycle of their products.
Businesses will simply pas that cost along to consumers, making consumers ultimately responsible - just like we are now. I’m not sure what model of ‘make business pay for it’ doesn’t translate to ‘make consumers pay for it’.
Of course, that is the point! Then the business which produces lots of waste (and has to charge for it) is competing with business which produces little waste.
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Consumers pay for some of the cost individually now, and some of the cost socialised through government. But neither consumer nor government have the power to minimise waste in the production of goods. Putting a clear monetary incentive on the backs of consumers and the responsibility with the market will actually change things.
My old town toyed around with this. No idea if they're still doing it but the idea was everything coming in would at least get a rough sorting. Seems like a MUUUUUCH better solution, even if it costs more.
Local sorting for compostable, definitely trash and possibly recyclable would be an improvement over what you're suggesting, then separation of recyclables can be done on the dry pile without the compostable trash ruining it (cardboard that has been wet is no longer recyclable, for example).
It will be for sure when the process can be automated. I'm guessing it will be not more than 10 or 20 years until we have robots that sort through the trash and separate things with a much finer level of detail.
Almost every human endeavor has progressed better due to the specialization of labor. Automation is not required. 10 people sorting trash full time will do a far better job than an equal amount of effort distributed over 1000 people.
