Letters to the Editor

Good for kids, bad for environment

To the Editor of THE EAGLE: The announcement that major beverage producers have voluntarily agreed to take soda out of elementary schools is good news for children's health. Unfortunately, the move does not bode as well for the environment.

These beverage giants have no intention of losing overall market volume. Reduced sales of carbonated soft drinks like Coke, Pepsi, and Mountain Dew will be replaced with bottled water, juice, iced tea, and sports and energy drinks. There will not be fewer bottles sold or less waste generated.

If anything, this substitution will create a bigger recycling problem because the replacement beverages are all non-carbonated, and are not subject to the nickel deposit in Massachusetts, or in 7 other of 11 U.S. bottle bill states. (Neither beverage type has a deposit in the remaining 39 states).

For years, these same beverage giants have lobbied against the update of our bottle bill to include non-carbonated beverages, claiming that residential curbside recycling programs are better. Many small communities such as Dalton do not even have curbside programs. Few schools — like other public and private institutions — have bottle and can recycling programs in place simply because it's not mandatory, and it costs money to run.

That's why deposits work; the humble nickel motivates children and adults to save their containers to redeem, or to donate to a school or civic group who will. The small incentive of a nickel deposit in Massachusetts has accomplished a 69 percent redemption rate for the carbonated beverages covered by the law. The average beverage container recycling rate in non-deposit states is only 28 percent. Nationwide, 85 percent of the plastic water and juice bottles sold were not recycled in 2005. That's 28 billion bottles trashed, or a million tons of wasted PET plastic: a petroleum product. Wasted energy, clogged landfills, more litter on our streets and parks.

The American Beverage Association and its member companies will ride the positive PR wave of this school announcement for quite some time. Now it's up to Massachusetts citizens to say that we value the environment just as we value our children's health, and to call on these companies to stop fighting the bottle bill update.

JENNIFER GITLITZ

Dalton, May 4, 2006

The writer is research director, Container Recycling Institute.