Universal Waste Income
The Idea that might change the World
This is the full transcript from episode 57 of ShortCasts with Ryan - you can listen here.
There may be several small typos or grammatical errors since this was created in a way I could read aloud for the podcast.
We are ruining our world with waste.
It is no question that humans are creating too much waste, and frankly, we don’t have many good ways to deal with it. Our pollution is slowly toxifying our oceans, killing our ecosystems, dissolving our atmosphere, and raising global temperatures.
If we love our planet, why don’t we treat it with more respect?
The answer… Incentives.
Just like the lessons from my last podcast episode about dog training and behavioral reinforcement, humans, just like dogs - respond to both positive and negative incentives.
Most of us know that we should be recycling, that discarding too much trash and waste is leading to problems, yet, we still do it - I still do it. It doesn’t seem to be enough to simply tell people what they are doing is wrong, it hardly works to even show people a better way - true change comes with incentives.
How can we incentivize people and businesses to become better stewards of our planet? A trillion-dollar question.
To be honest, I don’t know the answer - but I do have an idea: Universal Waste Income.
The idea of Universal Waste Income is to create incentives for people and businesses so that becoming a better steward of our planet isn’t something that we know we SHOULD be doing, but something we are REWARDED for doing.
But, How can we reward people? Affirmation? Recognition? Fame? Why not use the cause and often the solution to most of our problems; Money.
The idea of Universal Waste Income is to create both financial rewards and punishments that encourage and teach people and businesses to produce less waste and become better stewards of our planet. The same way you might teach a dog to pee outside rather than peeing on your carpet - using incentives, rewards, and conditioning.
Let’s take my own personal example of recycling - I am someone who tries my best to recycle and am lucky that Fayetteville Arkansas is one of the few places that actually picks up my recycling for me. The only problem is - I have to pay for my recycling to be picked up. Luckily I’m in a position where this doesn’t hurt me, but imagine all the people who are making the decision to either pay to have their recycling picked up, or simply to not recycle. People are currently incentivized to NOT recycle, and that’s the problem.
Why can’t we create a system that actually PAYS people to recycle? Why can’t we flip this system? How can our government dish out 1.4Trillion dollars for free but we can’t get people to help our planet?
The idea of Universal Waste Income is to begin by paying people for the amount of recycled material they successfully recycle. Dollars are the incentive. Money is the motivator.
Do you think you would be more likely to recycle if you were paid to do it? How about your neighbor? How about those with lower incomes? Even businesses?
If there is anything that creates changes in human behavior, it’s economic incentives.
Now, there are a few points to address. How can this be an equitable system that doesn’t just make the rich richer, and how can this feasibly be accomplished? And Where does the money even come from?
This is where things get a bit more complex, but I have a few thoughts.
How can we make sure this is an equitable system? Well, you’ve heard of tax brackets, right? I think this system can be broken into different tax brackets so that people are incentivized appropriately. Those who are lower in incomes would receive more incentives since presumably, it may be harder to recycle due to a wide variety of circumstances. Those with higher incomes presumably would need less exterior incentives so could be appropriately incentivized with less money. The same with business, small businesses incentivized and paid more, larger corporations less.
Now Let’s talk about where the money comes from and the other side of this equation. We have talked through how to positively reward and pull the good behavior of recycling - but how can we both generate the money needed to create this incentive and push people away from the unwanted behavior of creating waste? The answer - a fee. That’s right, we are still looking at money being the primary motive here, but this time, in the other direction. This idea is similar to that of a carbon tax, taxing companies for the amount of carbon they produce so that they will want to produce less carbon.
This time, we are specifically looking at waste. The idea is to create a fee or a tax for the amount of waste that people and businesses create. If a business creates more waste, it has to pay a higher fee - less waste equals less of a fee.
This would need to operate off the same type of tax or bracket system to ensure this is an equitable solution. The last thing we would want to do is make people who are lower in income and potentially struggling or have large families and produce a lot of waste pay excess money and be negatively impacted. We want to create a win, win, win situation all around.
These financial “punishments” can weigh the same bracket system as the rewards. So that someone who is lower-income, not only makes MORE money from recycling but is taxed LESS by producing waste. For those in harder situations, a larger pull or reward will be more effective and ethical than a push or punishment. Then for individuals who make lots of money and have plenty of means, there is room for more of a fee for creating waste and less of an incentive. The same with businesses and business sizes. Small businesses are taxed less and rewarded more - corporations are taxed more and rewarded less.
But EVERY SINGLE person, business, and entity has their own ability to manage their own financial outcomes in this system by either wasting less or recycling more.
We are creating positive rewards for the behavior we want while creating negative rewards for the behavior we don’t. Just like training our dogs.
To the point of where the money comes from - it can come directly from the system itself. Money that is taken from those who are creating excess waste, especially the corporations that do so on a massive scale is then redistributed to those individuals and businesses who are recycling the most or who need it the most. Remember that those with lower income and small businesses get higher rewards and rates of distribution.
The last question I wanted to address is that of feasibility. How does this get done? How can we tell how much waste and recycling is produced?
This is definitely a tough question, but I believe there are solutions.
Right now, the City of Fayetteville does a few things. 1. They pick up and sort our recycling into different materials. 2. They weigh the amount of waste that gets sent to landfills.
I believe, we can design trash/recycling pickup trucks, that have scales built-in - so that we can weigh the amount of trash, and waste that is picked up at each business or home, and with the potential of integrating smart solutions, each home can instantly know how much waste and recycling they are producing while also seeing how much they are going to get paid or how much they have to pay for the waste they are producing. I can imagine this even utilizing some emerging block-chain technologies to ensure the accuracy of nodes on the system.
Of course, when it comes to recyclable materials, things will have to be incentivized by material. We don’t want everyone to start eating cans of beans all because cans are heavy and carry extra incentives. But right now, Fayetteville already sorts recycling at each home so each material can be weighed independently and the reimbursement can be calculated accordingly.
This system could potentially also expand to another large area of waste management - composting. Allowing people to have their compost picked up and letting people get paid to do so. Most cities provide a trashcan for their residents, why don’t we provide compost bins and why can’t we also incentivize compost creation and collection. With Universal Waste Income, we can.
Imagine the change that we would see in our corporations. Even those who look only to maximizing profits would now need to consider proper waste management and recycling into that equation so they CAN maximize profits. Maximizing profits would be closer aligned to the externalities that producing waste has on our planet and environment. Businesses, as they would grow, would also innovate to create new and better ways to either produce less waste, recycle more, or compost more. Innovation follows incentives. Behavior follows incentives. And the individuals who now make up corporations are also incentivized at a personal level to follow these same incentives. Incentives change behavior, and behavior creates change.
It is important to keep in mind that when building a system like this, it can start small. Changes can be made in your neighborhood, changes can be made in your city. Once you initiate a local change, it is easier to start learning, developing, iterating, and scaling an initiative to grow your impact. It would make a world of difference, for even a few neighborhoods around the world to implement a solution like this, but imagine the difference this would make at a systemic level.
The world I like to imagine is a world that is more equitable for all and a world where people are making decisions that not only make their lives better but the lives of people around them better too. It’s such a folly that our incentives are not developed in a way that promotes the stewardism of our beautiful earth - for even though we all have our differences, we are all united by our being human, and our home being on this planet. Let’s create an environment where we treat ourselves, eachother and our planet with the respect all of us deserve. Let’s strive to make this world a better place.
There are many ways this can be done, but one of the most glaring to me is through the incentives around our waste. Universal Waste Income, is just another idea in the bucket that might sound insane, but be crazy enough to change the world.
And for those of you out there listening, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time. And for all of you who are out there dreaming, keep dreaming big, keep pushing forward, and keep yourself crazy enough - to think you can change the world.
