March 3, 2007
Water, juice and tea: 'Bottle bill' would expand deposits
By Brian Lockhart
This was the second year Brian Flaherty, director of public affairs for Greenwich-based Nestle Waters North America, testified in Hartford against expanding bottle redemption laws to noncarbonated drinks.
Flaherty is not willing to concede the battle, but he recognizes that the legislation, intended to encourage more recycling, is gaining momentum.
"I don't want to characterize it as inevitable," Flaherty said. "But there's clearly interest behind it."
Industry opposition killed similar proposals in the 2005 and 2006 sessions, but legislators from both parties believe the current "bottle bill" has a good chance of passing.
If it is adopted, Connecticut would join Maine, California and Hawaii in allowing the redemption of deposits on plastic bottles of waters, juices, teas and other noncarbonated beverages.
"I try to put myself back 20-something years ago," said state Sen. John McKinney, R-Fairfield, referring to 1980, when the legislature embraced recycling beer and soda bottles, which since then have been returnable to stores for a 5-cent deposit.
"If the legislature had known then that bottled waters and sports drinks and teas and lemonades would be as popular as they are now, they would have been included, too," McKinney said.
McKinney is the ranking Republican on the General Assembly's Environmental Committee, which this week held a public hearing on the bill. Committee co-chairmen state Sen. Bill Finch, D-Bridgeport, and state Rep. Richard Roy, D-Milford, support the legislation.
The bill also would increase the incentive to return bottles by boosting deposits from a nickel apiece to a dime - but only if neighboring New York and Massachusetts make the first move.
"We can't go forward without the other states doing it," McKinney said. "The evidence is pretty strong that our businesses along the borders really get hurt by that."
Gina McCarthy, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Protection, testified in support of the bill.
She told legislators that a solid-waste management plan released in December identified water and noncarbonated beverage containers as significant components of the state's litter problem.
"While such containers are recyclable, their use often occurs away from the home, where the tendency is to throw them away or worse, to toss them on the ground," McCarthy told the Environmental Committee. "Applying a deposit requirement to the purchase of these bottles is a relatively simple means of helping to deal with these problems."
But Flaherty said the change would require Nestle Waters, producer of the Poland Spring and Nestle Pure Life brands, to establish a costly new system of collecting the bottles from stores or redemption centers through a third party.
"A company like mine ships its products differently to market than soda and beer. . . . Once we drop our pallets of water to a Target or a Stop & Shop, we lose sight of where they go," Flaherty said. "We believe the best place for the plastic water bottles that we make are in the bin at curbside."
The expanded bottle bill also would have a significant impact on Norwalk-based SoBe Beverages and its line of flavored teas, juice drinks and waters.
SoBe's parent company, Pepsi-Cola North America, referred all questions to the Connecticut Food Association, its partner in opposing the legislation.
Association spokesman Carrie Rand said food stores oppose the bill and the additional burden it would place on their collection of recyclables.
"We're food stores. We're not in the garbage business," she said. "In 1980, there weren't the number of bottles there are today in various shapes and sizes. Beer and soda is a very limited product line."
She said the upgrades to recycling equipment and other changes necessary to collect and return noncarbonated beverages would cost food stores statewide an estimated $31 million.
"And we have nowhere to put that $31 million but on your food," Rand said, forecasting higher prices if the bill becomes law. "It's an anti-consumer issue."
Copyright © 2007, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.
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