Editorial

Linda Frame, program director for the group, is understandably frustrated. She said some Adopt-A-Highway groups that clean up roadsides are throwing in the towel and calling it quits over the bill's failure to win majorities in the House and Senate.

"Quite frankly, they're pretty ticked off," Frame told the Register-Herald of Beckley. "And several of them are not going to do cleanups this year because they feel like they're not getting support from the government."

That's unfortunate. Cleanup volunteers deserve everyone's thanks for their efforts. And while they are free to do as they please, to stop volunteering over a legislative matter is counterproductive.

The bottle-bill proposal itself has big problems.

In January, Kevin Dietly of an environmental consulting firm in Westford, Maine, called the proposal impractical because it would collect a 10-cent deposit per can that would cost 13 cents per can to administer. People would get their 10 cents back as a refund, with retailers getting another three cents per can as a handling fee.

"It doesn't take a genius to figure out that trying to collect dimes on virtually every beverage container you sell in the state from about 5,000 different retail locations, putting that back in a box somewhere at the Capitol and then paying out 13 cents on every one of those that comes back when somebody wants a refund won't work," he said.

The state would lose money if 77 percent or more of the cans were recycled.

West Virginia also would be the only one of the six states in its region collecting deposits. This could create a situation where state residents would buy cans in neighboring states while people in neighboring states would cash in their cans here.

Instead of throwing in the towel on picking up the trash, bottle bill proponents should work on the flaws in their proposal. That is how the legislative process works.