For years, Texas has grappled with the effects of plastic waste in its public spaces, water ways, and in neighborhoods. Instead of collecting the litter and reusing it, Texas’ bottling and manufacturing industries have relied heavily on foreign imports from China, Mexico, Canada and others.
With Washington’s new tariff policies, Dr. Raymond Robertson sees an opportunity for Texas to curb its waste problems, limit its reliance on foreign imports, and create a valuable domestic supply of goods for the industry with a market-driven bottle deposit system in Texas.
Robertson serves as a professor and holder of the Helen and Roy Review Chair in Economics and Government in the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service. He also directs the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics and Public Policy. His research covers labor-market integration, global value chains, international trade and investment.
He discovered the United States “is importing trash,” a finding he calls “pretty staggering.” He says the issue deserves the same attention leaders give to chips and other strategic imports. “The trash thing seems to be something we should also keep on the radar … we don’t really need to be importing trash.”
His new study estimates a policy lever: that “if we increase our tariffs by 1%, we reduce our imports of trash by 3%,” a response he says is about ten times larger than typical tariff effects in trade literature.
According to Robertson, trash responds to price because “chips have a very high value-to-weight ratio … trash is not as valuable and it’s a little bit heavier.” When tariffs raise prices on low-value materials, “people start to look around and they want to find other options,” behavior he describes as “more elastic.”
He connects trade to cleanup. “We have enough trash around us all the time,” he says. “Those plastic bottles have value. We actually lose almost a quarter of a million dollars in value from the stuff just laying around.” In his view, price signals create a “perverse economic incentive where it’s cheaper to import the trash than to take it out of our waters, lakes, rivers and streams.”
Robertson says a deposit-refund system is the practical fix and that “the impact would be absolutely tremendous.” States and countries with well-designed systems achieve “up in the 70s, 80%” reclamation rates. Texas currently has a rate below 20%. The market logic is to create incentives, he says. “It’s a much more market-friendly way.” Families keep costs low because “with the deposit-refund system, you get the money back.”
He says Texas industry already wants the material. Bottlers print recycled-content targets, yet “we don’t collect enough recycled material in Texas to meet those standards,” he says.
According to him, a Texan version of a bottle bill could draw from many models. “Sometimes it’s public-private partnerships, sometimes it’s public collection, sometimes it’s private collection … Texans have the opportunity to do a Texan version that’s palatable and welcoming.”
He calls for cultural leadership as well as policy. “Texas is our house … we want to keep our house clean,” he says. “Importing trash makes no sense.” He remembers the “Don’t Mess with Texas” ethic and says it “just needs a little more oxygen,” maybe from a high-profile champion who can rekindle pride in clean roads, lakes, and beaches.
Robertson acknowledges setup costs for reverse-vending machines and logistics, but frames them as investment. “Once the system is in place and it’s working, we’re going to greatly increase the supply of recycled plastics here in Texas … when you increase the supply, it drives down the price.” He also says recycling and these types of programs are job creators.
He points to regional competition as a wake-up call. “Mexico really gets its act together in terms of recycling,” he says, increasing demand for recycled inputs and drawing material from the United States. According to him, Texas should meet its own demand first and then export surplus. “If we collect so much that we meet domestic capacity … I’d be more than happy to export trash.”