THE PLASTIC PROBLEM: A FREE MARKET SOLUTION

Abstract

Plastic bottles have been considered environmental anathema on many college campuses, and elsewhere in our society. Plastic is seen by environmental critics of the market as particularly harmful, and must therefore be all but banned from polite society. The free enterprise system has been thought to have failed to price this substance out of use. However, the contention of the present paper is that this is not a case of market failure. Rather, on the assumption that plastic is indeed harmful, prices do not reflect this fact due to the nationalization (municipalization) of garbage dumps. If they were privatized, then disposal prices would tend to reflect the harm done by plastic.