20. Polluter Pays
Polluter Pays is an approach to environmental management whereby the polluter is charged for the environmental pollution caused. It is seen as a way in which one can relate pollution directly to the polluter in cases where recycling may not recompense society proportionally. For example do the newspapers that are recycled actually become newsprint again? Or has the bottom fallen out of the market and do they in fact still just end up in landfill? Do the bottles that are recycled get re-used? Or are they crushed up and mainly go into aggregate for road-building? Proponents say that making the polluter pay directly is easy to implement and easy for everyone to understand. No need for carbon credits or similar such complex financial schemes that can be subject to manipulation. As an example airlines pollute, and whilst there are schemes such as the
EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) designed to govern emissions, it is
proposed that more effective control would be realized with a tax on aviation fuel which is in fact currently untaxed!
In the automotive industry motor manufacturers tell us how the performance of their new cars is much more environmentally friendly than that of the older cars, and it is true . . . except . . . the environmental cost of building a car is still very high. Similarly whilst end products might be seen to be environmentally neutral, there are many instances where the by-product of the production process could be potentially hazardous or poisonous and has to be safely disposed of. 43