I think maybe we seem to be disagreeing because I see it as a feature that<p>&gt; If the taxes are levied indirectly then there is very little incentive for any parties to change their behavior.<p>I don&#x27;t care about any particular behavior per se [in the context of this discussion!]. If the costs of cleaning up people throwing plastic away are being met by a tax, why would one care whether plastic continues to be used for new items and people continue to throw it away?<p>It&#x27;s possible that the most efficient behavior – in terms of physics – is to make things out of certain materials and then throw them away after some point. It&#x27;s not obvious that reuse or recycling are <i>always</i> more efficient than simply &#x27;wasting-and-remaking&#x27;, given all of the other elements of our environments (like bacteria, fungi, ambient energy, etc.).