April 24, 2007

Senators upgrade bottle law
By David Steves

SALEM - The Oregon Senate declared war Monday on the millions of plastic water bottles that end up littered on beaches and tossed in trash cans.

The chamber voted 23-7 to update Oregon's bottle bill - for the first time since its 1971 inception - to encourage recycling of water bottles.

In addition to containers for carbonated drinks, bottles and cans for water and flavored water beverages would carry a nickel deposit. As with pop and beer cans, that deposit would come back to the person who returns those water bottles to a grocery store or any other retailer that sells such drinks.

The passage of Senate Bill 707 represented a big victory for environmentalists and other recycling advocates, as well as an opportunity for today's lawmakers to connect with one of the most celebrated accomplishments of legislators from a generation earlier.

Senate President Peter Courtney said he would always regret that he could not claim the title of "native Oregonian." But the Pennsylvania-born and West Virginia-raised lawmaker said voting for SB 707 offered the next best thing.

"I, as a state senator, get to vote for part of Oregon's DNA. I get to vote for Oregon's bottle bill," said Courtney, D-Salem.

Critics say bill creates problems

For the seven lawmakers, all Republican, who voted against the bill, the arguments of the grocery, bottling and beverage distribution industries took precedent over those about updating Oregon's identity as the pioneer of the bottle bill. The bill's concept has since taken root in 10 other states and several foreign countries since 1971.

Specifically, the bill's opponents argued that stores would be overwhelmed by the bulkier, harder-to-compact water bottles, which would add to the bacteria already brought into food stores by pop and beer cans and bottles, and increase the number of receptacles needed for waste.

"This bill is not just about water bottles. This dramatically changes what you have to receive as a retailer," said Sen. Larry George, R-Sherwood. "The volume only increases the risk."

George and other opponents of the bill said they aren't opposed to recycling - they just don't want to rely on a 36-year-old law meant to fight litter to do the job of recycling that can now be handled more efficiently by companies that collect trash and recyclables.

"Simple curbside recycling is the best solution," said Sen. Roger Beyer, R-Molalla, citing figures from the grocery-industry lobby indicating that it costs $150 a ton to collect and process curbside recycling materials, compared with between $400 and $600 a ton for containers redeemed through the bottle bill.

Sen. Joanne Verger, a Coos Bay Democrat and chief sponsor of SB 707, said she was sensitive to grocers' concerns. She said that's why the bill includes an exemption for small grocery stores, which would be allowed to opt out of accepting recyclables under the bottle bill.

She expressed hope that the task force created by SB 707 would look at such long-range ideas as creating a network of redemption centers to replace or complement the role of grocery stores.

That panel also is charged with considering other concepts included in her original bills but put off for further study: increasing the per-container's deposit from a nickel to a dime and adding a larger array of beverage containers - not just for water but also sports drinks, iced teas and fruit juices.

"Today, that could not happen. But we couldn't wait for 126 million more water bottles to be thrown away," said Verger, citing the Department of Environmental Quality's estimate of the number of water bottles in Oregon that are disposed rather than recycled each year.

The bill now goes to the House. It will be championed there by Rep. Vicki Berger, a Salem Republican and the daughter of the outdoorsman who first introduced the idea of a bottle deposit to encourage the return of empty cans and bottles that were littering riverbanks, beaches and roadsides.

She listened to much of the Senate's debate and said she was ready to rebut the argument that it makes more sense to rely on curbside recycling than the bottle bill to keep water containers out of trash cans, ditches and vacant lots.

Berger said the bottle bill was the perfect answer to Oregonians' growing thirst for bottled water, which is most often consumed on the go, making it much more likely that it will be tossed in the trash or out the car window than brought home to the recycling bins - unless consumers pay an extra nickel or more per bottle that they can recoup by returning it.

Berger said the world of the 1971 Legislature and then-Gov. Tom McCall was one of steel beer cans and refillable glass pop bottles. Had Oregonians then toted around plastic water bottles like they do today, that original bill would have looked much different.

"It's time to cover the things that weren't envisioned," she said.

Check out David Steves' Capitol Notebook blog at www.registerguard.com/capnote. He can be reached at (503) 363-3451 or dsteves@guardnet.com.

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