Something that can sadly still been seen widely in ex-yu countries is illegal dumping of old furniture and appliances. It's common to leave smaller appliances next to garbage containers. There are recycling centers being built in cities, but a lot of people are unaware and don't know it's their duty to properly dispose of items. I believe it's the consumerist culture, people are being sold shiny products on shelves, but the whole dirty lifecycle is hidden from them. In addition, companies producing electronics and appliances should somehow participate in disposal, even just by making things easier to disassemble and recycle.
> people are unaware and don't know it's their duty to properly dispose of items. I believe it's the consumerist culture
> companies producing electronics and appliances should somehow participate in disposal
The curent approach is fraudulent offloading of responsibility.
The only solution is to charge manufacturers and importers complete cost of disposal / recycling for a given item. They can be asked to provide evidence of recycleability, they can be fined for lying. Manufacturers have incentive then, to improve recycleavility - costs willvbe lower. This issue should be solved between manufacturers and government.
Three reasons why current approach will never work:
1 - A consumer cannot evaluate suitability of a given item for recycling or disposability, that information is only avaliable to the manufacturer. A consumer cannot evaluate government's ability to recycle - UK has over 100 different local authorities and each has different rules for which kind of plastic goes where.
2 - Manufacturers routinely commit fraud - and there is no way for consumer to get compensation if they were told something is recycleable but 5 years later it turns out it's not. Recyclers themselves regularly commits fraud - people are told their item was recycled but actually it gets dumped in africa. There is currently a system in UK where recyclers get paid by government for recycling plastic, they claim they recycle 2x as much plastic as exists / gets produced/ is imported into UK. A significant portion ends up illegally exported to philipines, not recycled.
3 - Individual disposal is unpoliceable - you can't police millions of idividual people. You have to move to policeable entities - manufacturers.
