i like to think about thought experiments like this: what if electronics/large consumer goods were all bar-coded and, when they are disposed of, scanned in, and the original manufacturer is charged some fee for the recycling/disposal of them. Make "repairing with minimal waste" the recurring revenue that product companies shoot for, rather than the new new thing.
Whether it happens in tens, hundreds, thousands, or more years, every physical product has a finite lifespan.
So it might be simpler to charge a fee when a product is initially manufactured that is based on the current cost of disposing that product. Perhaps this could even replace things like consumer sales tax or VAT.
That would incentivize manufacturers to create products with minimal disposal costs, and it would incentivize consumers to hang on to products longer or buy used.
It's a fixed fee based on the category of the device though, so not really an incentive for companies to change their ways, other than moving the entire business line from making iPhones to light bulbs.
Canada charges a recycling fee when you purchase electronics. The claim is that it covers all costs of recycling at an audited/approved recycler.
When you are done with your electronics you can drop them off at any recycling center to be disposed.
It varies by province, but the cost is actually pretty minimal. I think the most expensive fee in my province is a large display at $7. The recycling fee for a laptop is less than a dollar.
It doesn't incentivize less consumption when you are paying the tax up front, but it does incentivize making sure that the electronics actually make it to the correct waste stream instead of the landfill.
I guess the point of charging the company at the time of disposal would be that they'd be earning interest on that money in the meantime. So they'd be incented to make it last longer.
It wouldn't work for several reasons though, not least because the company could cease to exist before the product failed.
Recycling, as is, means reducing something to its component materials. We need to incentivize manufacturers such that it means reducing something to its component parts. Testable parts, with standard interfaces.
Perhaps we should have that bar code link to a prepaid account which handles shipping it back to the manufacturer. Things will be more repairable if making the most of a broken one was the manufacturer's problem.
