Let us Stop Big Businesses Passing on Hidden Costs to Consumers, Society & Environment
January 2, 2008: There is an important social principle currently being violated by many manufacturing activities: While engaged in a profit-making activity, one must not leave a mess behind for the rest of society to clean up. This principle can easily be understood as common decency. If I come to your house as a salesman in order to market something, I must clean up any mess that I make while selling my product. But this principle is continually breached by manufacturers and marketers on a large scale in our country, and nobody even thinks of objecting! Have you ever pondered how mineral water and soft-drink manufacturers who sell their product to you in a PET bottle take no further responsibility what happens to their non-biodegradable bottle? Most often, it ends up as litter in the environment, because the consumer simply does not know what to do with the bottle, other than tossing it away. This is not how it should be. At the time of conceptualizing and designing t...