Green Party Platform:
Recycling
Nature uses and reuses everything through continual recycling. We should pattern our use of resources after nature in sustainable cycles.
California alone produces more waste than the whole of China. We squander our resources through wasteful practices like excessive packaging, and throw away useful resources by burying them in massive and useless landfills. The Green Party promotes conservation and recycling to:
- Create a market for recycled goods through legal and tax incentives.
- Institute convenient curbside recycling (including yard clippings) in all urban areas.
- Manufacture "recycled" paper, labeled as such, out of a specific percentage of post-consumer waste paper.
- Rapidly phase out composites and other materials that cannot be recycled.
- Educate our children on the benefits of recycling.
- Simplify procedures that let people choose not to receive junk mail.
- Legislate deposits on glass, metal and plastic beverage containers.
- Legislate limitations in packaging and impose penalties for wasteful packaging.
- Legislate in favor of recycling used tires, and against burning of tires (tire-derived fuels) in manufacturing. [see the Protection of the Atmosphere plank]
- Remove obstacles to the sale of items in bulk, and standardize containers to make their reuse easier.
- Restructure garbage rates to encourage reduction in the volume of waste.
- Design and produce high quality goods that are durable, repairable and, then, recyclable at the end of their useful life; this concept is the opposite of the current "planned obsolescence."