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France to end non-essential printing of paper receipts
(www.euronews.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Fossil Fuels, Manufacturing and Agriculture are the largest polluters in the world, they always have been, this is not a mystery, so when governments take enforcement of green friendly policies down to the consumer level, they are play acting at doing something, all whilst their political constituents and contributors continue to keep doing the same fucking things. Year after year, decade after decade, but sure tell me again how home gas stoves, and plastic straws are gonna save the planet while shell, ford and monsanto keep pumping florocarbons into the atmosphere. We have the technology to go completely green at the industrial level, it's just "the wrong people" would be getting paid for energy instead of the villains which always have been.
My understanding of the push on gas stoves is more health reasons, such as the increased link to asthma in children.
Even as someone with a gas stove, I don't really see an issue with that. Things get restricted and banned for health & safety all the time. When I was growing up, cigarettes were everywhere and now you barely see them. Seems a weird hill to die on.
If they wanted to reduce the amount of useless receipts to curb consumption, just put a tax on receipt paper at the point of manufacturing. Increase the price there, and the market will automatically use less of it. And the tax can then be used to mitigate the effects of what receipt paper is produced.
It's far, far easier to regulate a dozen (or fewer) paper companies than it is to regulate millions of retail points of sale. The same goes for plastic: If the price of a gram of plastic included mitigating the effects of producing it, the price would be higher and therefore there would be less of it. And that which exists will be less likely to be wasted.
Externalities are one place where free market theory breaks down and needs regulation. Taxing at the source puts a price on this externality as soon as it enters the market, so the market can adapt to it.