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

The more industrialized a society, the more waste is emitted from each household. This is partly because industrialization encourage households to consume goods and also due to absence of proper waste management system. If there exists adequate infrastructure that provides optimal allocation of household waste quota, the dire outcome such as global warming derived from overflow of household waste would alleviate. However, imposing strict limits on the acceptable trash from households is not achievable because of some constraints that policy makers face. Moreover, there is superior alternative to trash quota which is constructing household trash emission market.

In reality, every household generates different amount of trash depending on household size, income, and propensity to consumption. Therefore, government should first observe household properties that decide amount of waste a household make, and then decide the distribution of quota. However, policy maker cannot properly decide an optimal amount of allowed trash from each household because there are household properties that are impossible to accurately measure and households always have an incentive to falsely report their traits. Propensity to consumption, for instance, would be often overstated by households in order for them to take larger waste quota from government. Therefore, it is extremely challenging for policy makers to properly set trash emission limit for each household.

Additionally, even if policy maker can figure out the ideal trash quota for each household, strict limit would not be achieved without cost. For high-income households, they would sway government officials to have more favorable quota for them taking advantage of their influential position in society. On the other hand, low-income households that cannot meet the trash limitation would be willing to take illegal measure to get rid of their trash because they cannot handle the penalty from not abiding by the quota. Therefore, strict limits may not bring the desired policy result because of its rigidity.

Alternatively, building a market for household trash emission market would be free from above listed difficulties because it utilizes market mechanism. Construction of an emission market that allow households to freely trade garbage emission allowance would result in maximization of consumer utility and would enable the government to control the total trash generated from households. Adam Smith claimed a market is ran by "invisible hands" which means no government official is needed when the market is properly functioning. With its price mechanism, household trash emission market would maximize social surplus which was impossible with strict quota.

As consumption is a gist of capitalism, household generated trash would constantly increase in amount without appropriate policy. If the government fail to monitor and control the household trash amount, various environmental disasters would eventually harm the humanity. However, strict quota is a policy too difficult to implement and not effective enough to protect our civilization.