Opinion

Bring redemption centers' fee up to date

It's time the people of Iowa were told just how the bottle bill works. Most people believe that redemption centers are paid by the state. Not true - the only involvement the state has is deciding the handling fee and enforcing the rules.

When distributors sell pop, beer and wine products to the grocery stores, they collect a 5-cent deposit. When the store sells the product they get their 5 cents back from the customer. Once the customer returns the container to either the store or redemption center they get their 5 cents back.

Then the store or redemption center separates the empties by brand, size and color. Once this is done, the distributors pick up their own empties, and pay the store or redemption center 1 cent per container.

To recoup their costs, distributors sell the aluminum (which has been at record highs for several years). They also keep any unreturned deposits, amounting to millions of dollars a year. The fewer containers returned, the more money the distributors make.

2008 is the bottle bill's 30th anniversary, and for 30 years the handling fee has not changed. Distributors and grocers say that raising the handling fee would be a $19 million tax. Not true, it's a deposit that is 100 percent refundable.

Though distributors say they will have to raise the price of their products to cover costs, they have already been raising their prices yearly - sometimes more often - and will continue to do so.

- Rosemarie Shepard,
Iowa Bottle Bill Coalition,
Montezuma.

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Redemption centers are in need of an inflation adjustment ("Redemption Centers Seek Higher Fee," Nov. 15). The 1-cent fee recouped by redemption centers, established in 1978, is not applicable in today's economy. In fact, the bottle deposit should be at least 10 cents. We don't need this part of our economy going out of business.

Iowa is relatively clean thanks to the law, but it will not be clean if the recyclers go out of business. The Legislature needs to re-visit this law and adjust it accordingly.

- John Carver,
Decorah.

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