Yup - this system worked great. Put a bounty on the plastic and the rest takes of itself.
Probably cheaper and more efficient than a formal state run recycling industry too.
You wouldn't even need a bounty if plastic was worth anything. However, the reason we use so much plastic these days is it is literally cheaper than dirt. You can squeeze some profits out of recycling it, but you need huge scale operations to achieve it.
It's kind of hard to sell recycled plastic to anyone when new plastic is nearly free.
China's richest billionaire made all of her money in recycled cardboard... so it's not like there isn't money to be made in recycling. Just as with any other enterprise, you do have to be smart about it and do the math.
You take a base commodity like gold, which is very valuable, and recycled gold makes up about 25% on the annual supply of new gold each year. Our financial recycling problems occur where the base commodity in question has little per unit value in the first place.
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