Providing incentives for waste reuse and recycling

Context

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. Agenda 21 recommends the review and reform of national waste policies to provide incentives for waste reuse and recycling. In particular it recommends that governments, according to their possibilities and with the help of multilateral cooperation, should provide economic or regulatory incentives to to encourage industry to invest in preventive and/or recycling technologies so as to ensure environmentally sound management of all hazardous wastes, including recyclable wastes, and to encourage waste minimization investment.

Claim

It does not make sense to treat recycling as if it is the start of a new industrial process. Post-consumption recyclable products should arrive at the recyclers with some kind of tax credit. This would encourage the recycling business, in addition to giving greater quality to recycled products.

Recycling fulfils an important function in society, generating countless positive multiplier effects, such as creating jobs for those most marginalized from the job market. The public sector benefits with the avoidance of thousands of packaging items that would end up in open dumps or in streets and rivers.