August 14, 2005
Is it still worth it for a nickel?
Return rate declining for bottle, can deposits
Bruce Mohl
Is the bottle deposit law half empty or half full?
That's the question that came to mind last week after the state Revenue Department released preliminary figures showing another drop in bottle and can returns.
The figures indicate consumers returned and recovered their nickel deposits on 65.7 percent of the 2.2 billion bottles and cans they purchased during the fiscal year that ended June 30. That's the lowest percentage since the bottle deposit law took effect in 1983 and way off the peak of 87 percent in 1995.
The low return rate means consumers bought more than 766 million beer and soft-drink bottles and cans last year but never returned them to claim the nickel deposit. More than $35 million in unclaimed deposits ended up in the state's pocket, but what happened to all those unredeemed bottles and cans?
Under the half-empty view of the bottle deposit law, many of those containers ended up as litter or thrown in the trash and eventually buried in landfills or burned in incinerators.
Under the half-full view of the law, a significant portion of those unredeemed containers, maybe 10 to 15 percent, went into curbside recycling bins where they were recycled but not redeemed.
''For convenience sake or confusion's sake, people are putting redeemables out with normal recycling," said Jim Garrity, a liaison to municipalities in Romney's Office of Commonwealth Development.
Garrity said he has no documentation for the shift to curbside recycling, but he said the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. He and environmental officials in the Romney administration say many consumers drop their cans and bottles in the recycling bin because they aren't interested in storing, sorting, and returning containers for the nickel deposit. After all, a nickel is worth half as much today as it was in 1983.
''People would rather do it that way than go through the trouble of redeeming it themselves," said Corbie Kump, a spokeswoman for Romney's environmental affairs office, who says that's what she does.
The Romney officials also say the bottle deposit law is too confusing. The current law covers carbonated drinks and beer, but exempts a slew of noncarbonated beverages that have gained tremendous popularity over the last decade, including waters, juices, teas, and sports drinks. Since it's too confusing to figure out which containers go back to the store and which ones go for curbside recycling, Romney officials say consumers are simply throwing them all in curbside bins.
In New York, which has its own bottle deposit law, some local officials say they have firsthand knowledge that consumers are dropping redeemable containers in recycle bins.
James Hogan, recycling director for Westchester County, said each year about 10 tons of aluminum cans are dumped in curbside bins. He said the county turns the cans over to the Westchester Association for Retarded Citizens, which sorts and redeems them. He said redeemable plastic and glass containers also come into his recycling plant, but it's too expensive to sort those out.
''With our increasingly busy lives and the ever-declining value of a nickel, I think there's more and more an inclination to use the recycling bin," Hogan said. ''No one wants to make a separate trip to the store."
Pat Franklin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute in Arlington, Va., said container recycling rates have been on a decade long slide nationally. On average, 35 percent of containers are recycled nationally, but Franklin said that average is as high as it is only because of the much higher recycling rates in the 11 states with bottle deposit laws. The group includes all the New England states except Rhode Island, plus New York, Delaware, Iowa, Michigan, Hawaii, and Oregon.
Franklin says the declining redemption rate in Massachusetts is cause for concern not just because bottles and cans are being landfilled but because containers recycled under the bottle deposit law are worth more than those recycled through curbside programs. She said the commingling that occurs in municipal recycling programs taints the end product, making it less valuable to companies that reuse the material.
To increase the state's redemption rate, the most obvious option would be to raise the deposit to a dime, giving consumers a greater financial incentive to return their empties. Michigan has a 10-cent deposit and its redemption rate has hovered around 90 percent.
But neither Romney nor state lawmakers seem interested in upping the deposit, which is politically unpopular. Instead, they want to expand the bottle deposit law to include water, juice, tea, and sports drinks. In Connecticut and New York, bottle deposit law expansions gained some traction this year, passing one branch of the legislature but not the other.
Critics of the bottle deposit law would like to go in the opposite direction. Christopher Flynn, the president of the Massachusetts Food Association, which represents supermarkets across the state, said the declining redemption rate means consumers are either throwing away their containers or recycling them elsewhere. He said it makes more sense to do away with the bottle deposit law and focus resources on expanding curbside recycling. ''We're spending an inordinate amount of money to recycle 3 percent of the state's waste system," he said.
Phillip Sego, the coordinator of the bottle bill task force at the Sierra Club, said it makes no sense to scrap the law. He said the law should be expanded and backed with more money.
The state used to spend the money it receives from unclaimed deposits on environmental projects, but three years ago during a budget crisis the money was diverted into the state's general fund. Now that the state is healthier financially, Sego said, the money should again be used to promote recycling.
''Recycling rates in general are, unfortunately, falling, but nobody is suggesting that we simply give up on it," Sego said. ''Our society must find ways to improve recycling in every way possible. We simply have no choice."
