[baroffoos]

Its corporate green washing. Companies know that customers generally feel some amount of guilt over the products they purchase due to the environmental impact of them so they get the marketing teams to find some way to ease that guilt without actually doing much at all.

Recycling has mostly been a global scale PR move to make people think they can buy as much product as they want and its ok because it gets turned in to new products after. What most people don't understand is while many things can be recycled, most things aren't. And most of the time recycling is actually downcycling. The product gets turned in to a lower form of material and after that its garbage.

Its also a method to turn the blame around. Environmental damage isn't the corporations fault. Its your fault for not recycling enough even though the recycling centers have just shipped it off to the 3rd world to be burned.

[lonelappde]

Producers and consumers are equal partners on pollution. If consumers don't want to buy polluting products they must stop, by self-control or by passing laws.

[clarry]

It would be a start if people had an easy way of comparing the pollution caused by each product when they're shopping. Like they can compare calories or fat in food, or the energy efficiency of light bulbs.

Of course, if such a system were in place, it wouldn't be a big leap from there to slapping extra tax on each item depending on the amount of pollution.