July 22, 2007

Bottle-Deposit Bill

Throughout the 1980s, North Carolina environmentalists worked fruitlessly for mandatory cash deposits on beverage bottles. Now that idea has resurfaced and, although it will not be considered by the General Assembly this year, it should once again be a matter of public discussion.

Bottle bills, as they work in nearly a dozen states, involve a deposit made at the point of purchase. The store then transfers the money collected to a separate entity that returns deposits. When a consumer is finished with his soft-drink bottle, for example, he can take it to a bottle return kiosk and get his money back.

The beauty of bottle-deposit bills is that they help reduce litter in two very significant ways. First, people are less likely to toss an empty bottle on the roadside if they can get a dime for simply returning it to the store. Second, even when people do throw the bottle onto the street, some kid looking for comic-book money is likely to pick it up to claim the refund.

Bottle bills can also help reduce the waste that goes into the state’s landfills — and that is another excellent reason to support a bottle bill. North Carolina landfills are filling much faster than planners expected 15 years ago when they pushed major solid-waste disposal reforms through the legislature.

When it comes to litter, bottles and cans constitute a major share of our problem. According to advocates of a bill that went before the Senate Commerce Committee this year, beverage containers make up more than half of all litter picked up in this state — whether measured by weight or volume.

Imagine how much cleaner North Carolina would be if half the litter on our roads, in our parks and along our waterways disappeared. Imagine how much money the state would save if it didn’t have to pay people to pick that litter up.

No one is so naive as to think that people who are so crass as to throw their garbage out a car window are suddenly going to act responsibly just to save a dime. But the deposit will make some people take more care, and it will enlist others to go and pick up free money.

Industries that would be affected by a deposit bill have a lot of clout in the legislature, and they’ve stopped the bill for this year. The arguments they have made for years are less potent now because of modern technology. Bottle-refund operations are almost totally automated, so stores don’t have to assign many employees to the task. And, because they are automated, they take up less space and are much cleaner.

Sure, bottle-refund operations cost money. But so do litter pick-up and landfill space. The industries involved have managed to transfer the costs associated with their products to taxpayers. It’s a convenient business model — getting taxpayers to clean up the mess their products make.

It’s time for North Carolina to revisit the idea of mandatory deposits. Such legislation will be good for the taxpayers and good for the environment.