Tobacco Companies to Be Billed for Cigarette Butt Cleanup in Spain
Tobacco companies to be billed for cleaning up cigarette butts in Spain / The Guardian
Add this to the list of other “small but possibly impactful” efforts by governments and regulatory bodies, globally, to convert the externalities of businesses into tangible internalities.
In this context, an externality is something like pumping waste into a lake or emitting CO2 and particulates from power plant cooling towers into the air: these emissions and this waste often don’t cost the companies anything, but they are costly for the environment, for local ecosystems, and for people living in the vicinity of where this stuff is being dumped or emitted.
Making these externalities internal means forcing the relevant companies to “feel” these impacts on their balance sheets, which incentivizes them to solve the problems (if there are no costs they have no significant reason to do anything about them, whereas if they lose money as a consequence of these issues they’ll be more likely to invest in solving them).
The degree to which these efforts are successful will depend on how serious the costs associated with the behaviors are (compared to how much it costs them to solve the problems in question), so expect some of these new rules and regulations to work and others to flop.
The appearance of these efforts (successful and unsuccessful) gesture at a new trajectory for some industries, though, which can influence future norms, even if current efforts don’t have the intended, short-term impact.
Also: How we came to know and fear the Doomsday Glacier
If you’ve found some value in this email, consider supporting this project by becoming a paid subscriber or buying me a coffee.
You can also support all my projects by becoming an Understandary member.