The fact that it’s the consumer’s responsibility to sort their waste and to try and minimise its impact on the environment in the first place is completely wrong to me.
Most people in urban areas rely on stores for basic survival, and the vast majority of products we buy there come with unnecessary waste. It doesn’t make any sense to then tell these people “by the way, you’d better clean up that mess when you’re done because it’s bad for the environment”. If governments were truly concerned or willing to act, this waste wouldn’t make it into our homes in the first place.
If a company wants to sell a product, they should be held accountable for the waste that comes along with it. They should have to prove that they can reuse the waste and be incentivised to reduce it. If they can’t, they can’t operate.
Ecocide laws need to become commonplace, and the consumer should not be responsible for their waste if they haven’t got legitimate alternative options. I understand this community is more willing to do their part in this regard, but I don’t think it’ll ever be feasible to expect this from the wider population. We need to stem the flow, not just handle the mess.
You have gotten one fundamental thing wrong though: if you look at the actual bill of material for most supermarket items it is often not the part that you think you are buying that costs the most, and it is certainly not the part that makes the most profit. In reality what you are being sold is the packaging and what comes inside is more of an annoying but necessary expense for most companies.
So what you’re saying is that if companies can’t use their fancy packaging, they’ll have a smaller profit margin on the actual good they’re selling?
The system is very fucked!
Basically. The most extreme example is bottled water, where the water is worth next to nothing and you are purely buying the plastic bottle (and to some lesser extend the transport by truck).
But packaging also allows for easy market segmentation which allows companies to sell almost the identical product in multiple price categories based on marketing and image of a brand.