Editorial
How to solve the bottle issue
Let’s take another crack at the Bottle Bill, the 1971 law on beer and pop containers that lawmakers in Salem are still wrangling about how to expand. The simplest solution has not yet been discussed, maybe because it’s too simple.
As passed by the Senate, the bill adds water bottles to the containers on which deposits are required. It also adds a requirement that grocers must accept bottles of brands they do not sell. This would mean they would be stuck with the empties because their suppliers would have no reason to pick them up.
Perhaps the philosophy behind the Bottle Bill ought to be re-examined. It says that sellers of merchandise continue to have a responsibility for their goods after they have sold them and must take them back when buyers are through with them.
This could be applied in other sectors too.
Future legislators might decide that car dealers should charge a deposit, say $500 or so. Then, once a car is at the end of its life and has quit running, the dealer would have to take it back and return your five hundred bucks. If the bottle law is the model, then it
wouldn’t matter if the returner didn’t buy it new in the first place.
How about (Egads!) newspapers? Maybe some day we will have to charge a quarter extra for the paper, then set up a system for taking used-up papers back when readers want their deposit returned.
In the case of bottles, the 1971 law worked well because it was simple and limited. It had two goals: Encourage recycling and reduce roadside trash. But as for household recycling, we now have a better system: curbside recycling provided by waste disposal companies under their franchise agreements.
The argument for expanding the bottle bill is that too many plastic water bottles end up in roadside ditches and in landfills as ordinary trash.
So, the simple solution would be to make illegal what we want to stop: The throwing away of plastic bottles.
Enforcement would be easy as far as households are concerned. Trash haulers would be authorized, or mandated, to reject refuse containing plastic bottles. And one or two high-profile prosecutions for willful discarding of plastic bottles would get the message across: Throwing away plastic bottles is illegal, just like driving without a seat belt in place.
(The state could post signs similar to the “Click it or ticket” warnings: “Plastic tossed: It’ll cost!”)
A ban like that would not be completely effective. No law is. But it would be effective enough. It would vastly reduce the tonnage of plastic that is simply discarded, and it would proportionately increase the amount that is recycled, reworked and put to a new use.
It would solve the problem without deposits or returns, and without burdening the stores.(hh)
http://www.dhonline.com/articles/2007/05/07/news/opinion/7edi01_bottleissue.txt
