Why are we wasting resources to *checks notes * save resources?

As we’ve noted before around here the price of doing something is an indication of the resources being used to do that thing. Money is how we deploy the use of resources after all. Labour, land, capital, they’re all resources, they’re things that cost money to buy and or rent.

Which makes idiocy like this very hard to understand:

The Government’s flagship bottle recycling scheme will cost companies ten times the amount that officials previously claimed, industry analysis suggests.

According to calculations by the British Retail Consortium, the planned deposit system for the purchase of drinks bottles and cans will cost retailers at least £1.8 billion a year.

That’s £1.8 billion in resources that are to be used. Sure, others say that it will only be £200 million but the point still stands.

Under DRS, retailers will receive compensation from the Deposit Management Organisation, which collects the returned material and sells it onto reprocessors, for hosting a return point.

The claim being made is that the value of those resources collected and sold will be less than the costs of the collection and sale. At which point, why on Earth are we doing this?

Prices really do work. If something makes a loss then that is subtracting value from our world. This is also known as making us all collectively poorer.

But prices also tell us of the resources being used. A loss is telling us that more resources are being used than saved. The value of those bottles and cans, collected, is less than the cost of the collecting. We are wasting resources in our effort to save resources.

This is, to be mild about it, mad. To be not mild about it this is insane.

All of this before we even start to discuss the amount of consumer time that’s to be spent hauling empties about and stuffing them into machines.

This is a carefully thought out and designed plan to make the people of Britain, the nation as a whole, poorer. Why are we doing this?