Environmental protection requires public responsibility for pollution.
Sweden's parliament is attempting to include responsibility for pollution in the national budget. Externalized costs are expenses such as pollution clean-up and health care that result from economic activities but are not included in the budget. For example, the costs of water purification downstream of a factory are considered external to the production budget at the factory. Somebody has to pay to purify the water before it is reused, and often the next users pay the clean-up costs. On a national level, externalized costs can include general environmental liabilities such as air pollution, soil erosion, water pollution, or respiratory ailments that are difficult to pin to any single producer.