February 1, 2007
Thompson supports bottle bill
by Sherry Greenfield
Frederick County Commissioner John ‘‘Lennie” Thompson Jr.’s efforts to create a beverage container deposit/return system have repeatedly come up short during his eight years in office.
‘‘Yes, I will support it,” said Thompson (R), who wants to read the details of the bill before commenting on it specifically. ‘‘We can have honest policy differences on the details, such as the deposit amounts, but we’ve got to move forward if we’re going to dramatically increase our recycling efforts.”
Though Hammen has yet to unveil specific details of how his bill would work, bottles would be redeemable at regional collection sites most likely run by the government, he said.
Consumers would receive a 5-cent refund on each bottle deposit. Retailers and beverage associations opposed to the idea are already sending letters to lawmakers in Annapolis saying that a 5-cent deposit would ‘‘trigger higher grocery prices for consumers...”
The Frederick County landfill on Reichs Ford Road takes in 800 tons of trash weekly, according to Thompson. Even with 70 percent of county residents (or roughly 46,000 homes) participating in curbside recycling, plenty of recyclable beverage containers end up in the county’s solid waste stream, Thompson said.
To deal with the county’s growing trash demands, ideas such as a trash transfer station and a ‘‘waste-to-energy facility” or incinerator have been proposed, but Thompson thinks those ideas are not enough.
Thompson believes the deposit⁄return system is the answer.
‘‘If we are to have any hope to avoid a waste-to-energy facility — and we’re not going down that path — we will have to recycle everything,” he said. ‘‘... And the easiest thing to recycle is beverage containers. And to get beverage containers out of the waste system we have to give people financial incentives.”
That is why Thompson would support Hammen’s efforts.
Hammen said he decided to introduce the bill after receiving complaints about debris in Baltimore’s Inner Habor while campaigning. Much of that debris is bottles, he said.
Eleven states currently have bottle return laws. They are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Vermont, according to the Container Recycling Institute. West Virginia, Tennessee, Illinois and Arkansas are considering them.
Thompson said Hammen should expect strong opposition from beverage associations and retailers who are against the idea.
Beverage retailers and distributors strongly opposed the idea when Thompson first introduced his proposal in 2001. Since then, each time he brings up the idea, Thompson said he gets letters of opposition.
‘‘Grandma will slip and fall when she brings back her empty containers,” Thompson characterized as one such complaint. ‘‘My answer to that was ‘did Grandma slip when she went into buy them?’ ... Those who market the product will be against this.”
Beverage companies and retailers are already coming together to fight Hammen’s bill.
‘‘We would strongly oppose such a measure,” said Barry F. Scher, a lobbyist with Giant Food, the region’s top grocer.
http://www.gazette.net/stories/020107/frednew205039_32324.shtml
