The best way to solve environmental problems caused by consumer-generated waste is for towns and cities to impose strict limits on the amount of trash they will accept from each household.Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree

It is popularly believed that the best way to tackle environmental problems caused by waste which is generated by consumers is to impose strict limits on the amount of waste they will accept from each household. Perhaps, no one will argue against the statement that today's environmental situation requires from us decisive actions; however, may we concur that the proposed policy is the best one? As far as I am concerned the answer on this question is "no" due to the reasons which will be discussed in details below.

To begin with, the policy proposes to implement strict limits on volume of garbage accepted but the author avoids saying about how and who will create those norms. For instance, norms may be more than usually household creates, to say, the norm is 20 kilos from each household per week, when people in average tend to generate only 15 kilos per seven days. Or the new limits may be close to the average, for example, 14 kilos of garbage accepted from each household. In all of those variants, the policy will not significantly impact on the current situation. On the contrary, the imposed restrictions may be too small, for instance ,2 kilos from each household per week. In this case, people may not be able to obey the law even if they want to do so. What is more, the generation of waste is not a linear process and, for example, during holidays we tend to create more garbage than usual, moreover, someone buys more products and cooks at home and therefore create more trash than a person who does not eat at home. In other words, the implementation of the norms seems to be highly questionable in particular because the norms may be inadequate for some household. This situation gives rise to the second question: what government is going to do with garbage surplus.

Although this issue may be seen as negligible, in fact, it is an important issue. For instance, the government may impose additional fee to charge for the garbage above the limits, however, if the fee is too small, probably people will not change their behavior; in case, the amount charged for the surplus of garbage is too big, people may look for alternative ways to dispatch the garbage, for instance, by creating chaotic scrape yards on the outskirt of the town, by burning it or throwing the litter in the local rivers and lakes. In other words, the fulfillment of the policy may bring unexpected and undesirable consequences instead of solving the problems. Therefore, is this policy the best way to combat the environmental problems?

Perhaps, the answer on this question is "no" in particular because it has some unexpected consequences. Besides even if the policy works perfectly, we will still have the problem with storage of this garbage. In fact, even two kilos of waste from each household of such megalopolis as New York per week will generate millions of tons of trash over a relatively short period of time. In other words, the policy may only alleviate the problem but not solve it. Probably, the policy which is aimed at recycling will do better. For instance, we may promote usage of environment-friendly materials to create new products from cell-phones to packages. Additionally to it, we may encourage responsible behavior among residents who may separate trash by its characteristics. As a result, we may address the root of the problem and annihilate the problem.

In conclusion, although proposed policy initially seems to be attractive, a closer look at it reveals some considerable shortages of the policy which make its realization highly doubtful. As a result, we cannot accept the policy as the best way to solve environmental problems.