I think it seems easier if you think about it as trying to find the right "price" of litter rather than the "optimal level". The naive method would be to just ask people how much they'd be willing to pay to have, say, half as much litter. This is crude but it wouldn't think the answer would be thaaaaat far off. (Probably in practice you'd want to leave the level to be determined by politics. That way you can have experimentation, reflect different preferences in different areas, etc.)
If we had a way to *consistently* assign punishments for littering, for example using some equivalent of those speeding cameras that record your license plate and send you a ticket, I'd be all for it. But consistently-assigned punishments wouldn't need to be as harsh.
Some littering is driven by people not feeling connected to society. I've noticed a distressing amount of litter around campsites of persons experiencing homelessness. The immediate thought is "Homeless people are dirty". A secondary thought is "What incentive do they have for keeping someone else's property clean, they will not experience any added value for cleaning up. They know that eventually someone will make them shove off"
Another observation: Stores that sell snack foods very often have litter near them. Some people will just litter and not look for a trash can; some people will look for a trash can, but will litter if they don't see a trash can; some people will try pretty hard to not litter. What is the incentive for a shop to add more trash cans and keep them in good order? I wish that convenience stores were required to put up a litter fence to keep the litter from leaving their property.
People will also litter where they don't think they are being seen. Just yesterday I came across a dump site on a cliff next to a creek. The creek is relatively inaccessible, so people think that no one will see the trash, and they feel like it just goes away.
Another thought: A lot of snacks etc are sold in plastic wrappers. Plastic is kind of a miracle in that it can help keep products safe from a lot of environmental conditions. When people open these snacks, it's common to tear a smaller piece of plastic off of a larger piece of plastic. Even conscientious people may drop that small piece, or lose track of it. What incentive is there for corporations to develop and use better packaging. Plastic is kind of a miracle, but every miracle can also be a curse.
The "small tear" of the plastic is a great observation. Beverages in cans used to come with ring tabs that you would sort of tear off of the can to open. I think these went away because people threw the tabs everywhere (even if they didn't throw the full can away). Probably we could figure out something similar with plastic wrappers.
Another technical solution that I thought was obvious would be to make plastic containers bio-degrade. Apparently currently plastics are already *sort of* designed to do that, it's just that they develop leaks within a couple years but don't fully degrade for hundreds, so they can't easily make them degrade faster without compromising their ability to do their original job. But it looks like many companies are working on plastics that will degrade within 18 months. I'm unsure how much this will actually help with urban litter in practice though (do things really sit around for 18 months without someone picking them up now?)
If you're going so far as to QR-code plastic bags you might as well go a step further and just assign them to purchasers directly. Businesses could assign specific QR coded packaging to customer payment cards on each sale, and therefore identify exactly who was responsible for that piece of litter. Cash sales would have to be paid by the business directly, possibly at a lower rate.
Indeed, maybe there's some kind of irresolvable tension between internalizing externalities and not being dystopian? Seems pretty obvious in retrospect but not something I've really thought about before...
I think it seems easier if you think about it as trying to find the right "price" of litter rather than the "optimal level". The naive method would be to just ask people how much they'd be willing to pay to have, say, half as much litter. This is crude but it wouldn't think the answer would be thaaaaat far off. (Probably in practice you'd want to leave the level to be determined by politics. That way you can have experimentation, reflect different preferences in different areas, etc.)
The problem with random harsh punishment for littering is that it wouldn't actually be random.
It would be "the police officer uses their discretion in deciding who to write up for littering."
In general I believe it's a bad thing when the police have this amount of discretion, because it leads to corruption -- eg, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42780382.
If we had a way to *consistently* assign punishments for littering, for example using some equivalent of those speeding cameras that record your license plate and send you a ticket, I'd be all for it. But consistently-assigned punishments wouldn't need to be as harsh.
Agreed, this seems like a very valid concern.
We definitely need to be thinking more carefully about how to disincentivize negative externalities. Thought provoking ideas and questions, thanks...
A few observations.
Some littering is driven by people not feeling connected to society. I've noticed a distressing amount of litter around campsites of persons experiencing homelessness. The immediate thought is "Homeless people are dirty". A secondary thought is "What incentive do they have for keeping someone else's property clean, they will not experience any added value for cleaning up. They know that eventually someone will make them shove off"
Another observation: Stores that sell snack foods very often have litter near them. Some people will just litter and not look for a trash can; some people will look for a trash can, but will litter if they don't see a trash can; some people will try pretty hard to not litter. What is the incentive for a shop to add more trash cans and keep them in good order? I wish that convenience stores were required to put up a litter fence to keep the litter from leaving their property.
People will also litter where they don't think they are being seen. Just yesterday I came across a dump site on a cliff next to a creek. The creek is relatively inaccessible, so people think that no one will see the trash, and they feel like it just goes away.
Another thought: A lot of snacks etc are sold in plastic wrappers. Plastic is kind of a miracle in that it can help keep products safe from a lot of environmental conditions. When people open these snacks, it's common to tear a smaller piece of plastic off of a larger piece of plastic. Even conscientious people may drop that small piece, or lose track of it. What incentive is there for corporations to develop and use better packaging. Plastic is kind of a miracle, but every miracle can also be a curse.
The "small tear" of the plastic is a great observation. Beverages in cans used to come with ring tabs that you would sort of tear off of the can to open. I think these went away because people threw the tabs everywhere (even if they didn't throw the full can away). Probably we could figure out something similar with plastic wrappers.
Another technical solution that I thought was obvious would be to make plastic containers bio-degrade. Apparently currently plastics are already *sort of* designed to do that, it's just that they develop leaks within a couple years but don't fully degrade for hundreds, so they can't easily make them degrade faster without compromising their ability to do their original job. But it looks like many companies are working on plastics that will degrade within 18 months. I'm unsure how much this will actually help with urban litter in practice though (do things really sit around for 18 months without someone picking them up now?)
I've picked up litter that is at least decades old due to that product being redesigned or discontinued.
If you're going so far as to QR-code plastic bags you might as well go a step further and just assign them to purchasers directly. Businesses could assign specific QR coded packaging to customer payment cards on each sale, and therefore identify exactly who was responsible for that piece of litter. Cash sales would have to be paid by the business directly, possibly at a lower rate.
Of course this is all incredibly dystopian
Indeed, maybe there's some kind of irresolvable tension between internalizing externalities and not being dystopian? Seems pretty obvious in retrospect but not something I've really thought about before...