Our tax policies should be brought into line with our priorities regarding the environment.
How many of us receive our paycheck stub and complain about the large amount of money taken out or at least lament the amount of money the government takes out? Sure, we’re working and working hard, but the more we work, which is usually deemed a positive contribution to society, the more we pay in taxes. Positive activity leads to a negative reaction? What gives?
Yes, we pay taxes on our income and can expect for that to continue. But how many negative aspects of our society could be discouraged with taxes? That is to say that we could implement a negative reaction to negative activities. And what’s stopping us, if not the lobbyists who have the ears of those in Washington?
The premise comes down to this: if something taxes the environment and public health, we should be taxing that activity.
Stated more simply: you should have to pay dearly to pollute the earth upon which we are all dependant.
And we should start with the biggest corporations!
What’s Stopping Us?
No one stops working because they are taxed because they need the income. However, companies may find ways to recycle their waste or make and utilize reusable shipping boxes if the production of and/or disposal of their previous materials were so heavily taxed that it became cost-prohibitive to continue the practice (or at least cost-encouraging to change). This isn’t a novel idea: taxing carbon is up for debate in Washington now. Right now, the tragedy of the commons causes wasteful practices to persist.
Cardboard Boxes, For Example
So, for example, millions of items shipped by truck across the United States are put into cardboard boxes. Sure, many of these are shipped in recycled paper boxes which are in turn recyclable. However, what if we used recyclable plastics (you know, milk jugs and water bottles — waste we’re already generating) to mass produce an entire line of plastic boxes (similar to the ones the United States Postal Service uses) that could be made for the many purposes we already make cardboard boxes for?
These boxes would hold up much longer than a standard cardboard one and could be used probably hundreds of times before needing to be replaced. We could put a tax on the use of cardboard boxes that would be used to support reforestation projects.
In this manner, the tax that is placed on an item (boxes) to protect a resource (our forests). That resource would directly benefit by preventing its destruction and funding ways of making that resource even more abundant. We would encourage businesses toward a more sustainable option by offering them the opportunity to avoid the tax altogether by choosing to use a different product.
Need another example?
How about composting? We’ve talked before about the importance of composting. I’ll pick once again on institutions and large vendors, like restaurants and caterers. These industries waste mounds of a natural resource in compostable waste, such as vegetable and fruit trimmings and coffee grounds.
This valuable resource could otherwise be used to make our soils more organic and would make us less dependent upon unnatural, petroleum-based fertilizers that pollute our food supply, soils, and water, not to mention contribute largely to dead zones in our estuaries and oceans.
We could place a tax on the compostable waste on a per ton or per pound basis that could start with larger chains and move downward toward smaller restaurants as time goes on. Enforcement could be done by auditing, let’s say, the amounts of waste of McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s and using a formula to estimate their national waste product. They would be given a deadline to comply with the law and would have the option of having the compost done in-house or through a private contractor.
The tax revenue generated by companies that do not comply could help build and operate government composting facilities or trucks, as could the sale of finished compost material to farmers. In this way, we will be able to save this resource that in so many ways is natural and in other ways is very unnatural.
Unnatural? Yeah! We ship in how many millions of tons of produce and coffee beans from halfway around the world? We already pay the price environmentally for that shipping. But we currently (most of us anyway) add insult to injury by having yet another truck ship it off to be buried with other garbage, which renders it inorganic and toxic for growing plants for the foreseeable future.
The Policy Recommendation?
We should begin taxing negative activities. Cigarettes are already taxed heavily (especially here, in Chicago). Another example? Chicago has a five-cent per bottle tax on bottle water, because it’s bad for the environment (and of course, to generate revenue). I’m not always in favor of higher taxes, but we should at least begin making an impetus for large companies especially to green themselves by taxing the forms of pollution and habitat destruction their industries create.
What other negative activities should we begin taxing to encourage companies to clean up their acts?
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