Companies should be responsible for their products

I envision a world where we don’t consume products without thinking about the effect it has in the world beyond what we used it for because I value conscious consumption, reflecting on the products we consume, and the effects they have on our bodies and our planet. I think companies should be forced to follow laws that require Extended Producer Responsibility so that they are forced to come up with solutions to the problems they create! If you are a company producing a product made of plastic or packaged in plastic, or even a metal that is energy-intensive to recycle, you should be responsible for the life of that product and the fate of that product after it has been used by the consumer. This will help incentivize innovations that actually help us recycle plastics while also incentivizing companies to move to materials that aren’t plastics and can actually be recycled. This takes the burden away from the individual consumers for how they deal with the plastic waste that they use, often because the places they live in do not have the infrastructure available to process these materials.