February 23, 2006
Town Online
Opinion
No need to kill the bottle bill
A nickel a pop isn't enough to stop pollution.
That's what state Sen. Robert O'Leary, D-Barnstable, says. Pointing to a steady decline in returns, O'Leary is looking to scrap the 24-year old system. In a letter written last year to the chairman of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications and Energy, O'Leary called the bottle bill "a '60s solution to a 2005 problem.
One could argue that anyone who thought the '60s had a solution to pollution probably wasn't a member of the Woodstock Cleanup Committee, but still the bottle bill seemed to be a pretty good idea, if not a new one. According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a national organization supporting sustainable communities, the first bottle law went into effect in 1934.
O'Leary has described the present system as an inefficient means of conservation that addresses only a small portion of the pollution problem. In a bill that looks at the broader issue of waste management, O'Leary asks that we repeal the bill and pass the cost of recycling on to the people who produce and sell the products that generate the greatest amount of litter. Doing this looks at litter beyond just bottles and cans while putting nickels back in the pockets of consumers without them having to first cash in their trash. But as the Sierra Club asked in its opposition to the measure, why throw the bottle bill out with the trash.
Granted, statistics show that the percentage of deposit bottles and cans being returned is at its lowest level, which would indicate the strategy isn't working. But is it the bottle bill that's the problem or the bottle buyer?
I've lived in the same home for a good many years now, and every now and then I'll find an empty bottle of Bud or a crushed can of Miller in my front yard. But never in all my years at that address have I found an empty bottle of Chardonnay or Merlot on my property. There's no deposit on wine bottles so what's going on? Why is it every week you find wine bottles at the local landfill lined up alongside the spaghetti sauce jars and any one of a number of non-refundable glass containers. Plastic water bottles are also non-refundable, but every week they too are carted off by conscientious consumers to the transfer station for recycling. So why isn't the same happening with soda and beer bottles and cans?
O'Leary has argued that the recycling centers for refundable bottles and cans are an inconvenience. Be still my bleeding heart.
Having to make a separate trip to a recycling center is a bother and supermarkets aren't equipped to take all refundable containers. But there are other options beside leaving bottles and cans where they were consumed or tossing them out the open window of a moving SUV. Plenty of people bring their bottles and cans to the transfer station where they are given to local charities who make good use of the deposits.
The money from deposit bottles and cans that are not recycled goes to the state, which is why O'Leary calls it a hidden tax. The state gets about $35 million a year that way, which disappears into the General Fund (a government term meaning "we don't know what happened to it"). Now you can get uptight if you like that your drinking dollars are being used by the government to support (fill in your favorite scapegoat) but the truth is, if it is that important you could have got off your butt and redeemed the bottles yourself. It also isn't clear how charging the manufacturers and merchants would be less of a hidden tax if they turned around and passed on the cost to the consumer.
Furthermore I don't know if I have a whole lot of faith in the proposal to use the funds to create a Clean Communities Trust Fund to encourage recycling. That's how the bottle bill started out, with money going to the Clean Environment Fund, before it was rerouted to the General Fund. So who's to say it won't happen again.
One of the uses suggested for the funds is more curbside recycling programs. But whether the "build it and they will dump" vision will motivate people who can't be bothered to recycle for a nickel to do it for nothing is debatable. Another use would be the development of pay as you throw systems at local transfer stations. The system, which requires that people pay for the amount of trash they bring to the landfill when they bring it rather than pay an up-front fee, has been hailed for its fairness and for encouraging people to be conscientious about recycling when they shop and when they dump. But it would likely place a greater financial burden on large families and since it doesn't give someone a financial incentive to use the landfill it could conceivably encourage illegal dumping. Still another suggested use of the funds is to allocate $10 million for an anti-litter campaign, similar to the "Don't Mess With Texas" program.
Granted we need to look at creative ways to encourage recycling and cut waste management costs, but if that includes slapping a "Keep our Commonwealth Clean" bumper sticker on the back of a gas-guzzling Hummer and calling it environmental education, maybe keeping the bottle bill isn't such a bad idea.
