March 22, 2007

New Canaan Advertiser
Opinion

From the Crow’s nest:
Bill in a bottleneck
By Ed Chrostowski

Connecticut’s General Assembly appears to be playing a vigorous game of spin the bottle.

There seems to be a pro for every con raised in the debate as the proposed expansion of the State’s bottle and can deposit law crowds a legislative agenda that ought to leave more room for the budget, mass transit, housing, health-care, eminent domain, energy costs and a host of other vital issues.

Truth be told, if the State has deemed it proper to require a refundable deposit on containers of carbonated beverages, why not iced tea, juice and water? Are bottles with bubbles more injurious and burdensome to trash and litter streams?
Of course, the issue is not really all that simple. Retailers, bottlers and distributors have put their own spin on the “bottle bill,” just as conservationists and environmentalists have.

Retailers (not all of them, it should be noted) argue that they are vendors and not the “garbage collectors” they would become if the law requires them to accept used containers from consumers who often don’t even bother to rinse them out. They used the same argument to no avail when the nickel deposit was put on soda and beer cans and bottles about 25 years ago, but they seem to have survived in pretty good order.

Bottlers and distributors also reiterate their complaints of 1980. More personnel, equipment and space would be needed, increasing their costs which, in all likelihood, would be reflected in the price the consumer pays at the register. That, plus the deposit on each container, would tend to put a damper on sales, they contend.
Ideally, all used containers would be discarded in recycling bins and the materials would be processed for re-use without the messy and admittedly costly deposit and retrieval routine. Alas, the ideal is always so elusive.

As often as not, drinks are consumed in parks, along jogging and hiking trails and at work sites where bins are not handy. Because each beer and soda can is worth a nickel, few are tossed aside or dumped into trash cans. Indeed, they become fund-raisers for charity groups and even a source of income for the homeless and the poor.

Not so with increasingly numerous water bottles. They become litter that is not only ugly, but costly to clean up and potentially harmful to the ecology. Or they compound the strain on transfer stations, incinerators and fragile landfills.

It has been estimated that beverage containers accounted for almost 50 percent of all litter until the deposit bill greatly  reduced the number of throw-aways. Now there are signs that those happy results are being negated by ubiquitous plastic bottles for drinks that were not in vogue when the deposit bill was enacted. In truth, then, it is an update not an expansion of the bottle bill that is being proposed.

Another significant factor in the creeping reversal is the low regard people have for the nickel in today’s fast-paced economy. To haul empty cans and bottles to the store just to retrieve a measly nickel apiece is not worth the time and effort, many people feel.

Consequently, bottle bill expansion advocates are suggesting that the bounty on a container be hiked to a dime. That sounds reasonable, but now the consumer at the supermarket check-out register would be paying 10 cents more for a can of soda, almost as much for the can as for the soda. That could put a damper on sales, the industry fears, though it may be a prospect pleasing to nutritionists.

Furthermore, unless New York and Massachusetts go up to a dime also, Connecticut retail stores could become dumping grounds for out-of-staters seeking to recoup double what they paid in deposits in their own states. That really wouldn’t be fair. Inexplicably, Rhode Island does not have a deposit law although it values the scenic beauty of is ocean-front. Perhaps the industry lobby is too strong there.

At any rate, the 10-cent proposal and the need to wait to see what New York and Massachusetts do adds to the bottleneck.

Even if updating the bottle bill is thus stymied, there can be no excuse for Connecticut to continue to overlook a serious shortcoming in the deposit law already on the books. The reference is, of course, to the unclaimed deposit refunds that add up to millions of dollars a year in Connecticut.

The consumer pays a nickel to the retailer for each can or bottle. In turn, the retailer pays the distributor who then pays the bottler. When the consumer brings in the container to claim his refund, the nickel embarks on a return trip. But millions of these cans and bottles are never presented for refunds. Who keeps the nickel then?
In Massachusetts, distributors and bottlers are required to turn all unclaimed deposits over to the state. Michigan does the same, but gives retailers 25 percent to cover their costs.

 These are not trivial sums. In the year 2000, unclaimed deposits totaled $28.5 million in Massachusetts, $23.5 million in Michigan and $84.7 million in New York. No figures were available for Connecticut, but guesses pegged it at about $13 million. And the State didn’t get a nickel.

The greater dilemma in the deposit bottleneck is not whether water bottles should be included. That should be a given. Nor is it whether the deposit should rise to a dime. That would depend, to a large extent, on similar action by our neighboring states.

No, the real puzzler is why the State of Connecticut continues to neglect those unclaimed deposits. Maybe we don’t need the money and all of this talk about raising taxes and tacking a dollar surcharge on the price of a train ride is just idle chatter.

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