February 23, 2008

Most Iowans support expanding bottle bill
By JASON CLAYWORTH

A majority of Iowans support expanding Iowa's bottle bill to cover more types of containers, a new Des Moines Register poll shows.

Sixty-two percent of Iowa adults favor expanding the law to include more containers, while 29 oppose expansion and 9 percent say they are unsure. The Iowa Poll of 801 adults, taken Sunday through Wednesday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Boone resident Joe Graff wouldn't mind adding more containers to the law, as long as the deposit doesn't change.

Graff, 76, said he disliked Gov. Chet Culver's original plan that would have doubled the 5-cent deposit to 10 cents but returned only 8 cents to consumers.

The remaining 2 cents would have diverted millions of dollars every year to an environmental fund and to help pay bottle handling operators.

Culver has since dropped that portion of his plan, focusing instead on expending the number of containers covered by the bill.

"I wouldn't be opposed to that, no," Graff said of Culver's most recent proposal. "There are a lot of bottles that aren't covered now that end up on the roadside."

Gerald Schnepf, executive director of Keep Iowa Beautiful, estimated that expanding the bottle bill to containers such as juice, milk and water bottles would divert another 2 percent to 3 percent of roadside waste off Iowa's roads.

Schnepf said most polls indicate that most of Iowans support expanding the bottle return policy.

"Generally, it's pretty well embraced by most people," Schnepf said. "They embrace it because it helps set a behavior pattern that reduces litter."

However, the issue is not among Iowans' top priorities for the current legislative session, the poll shows. Forty-three percent said it was not very important for lawmakers to act on the issue this term, compared with 17 percent who said it was very important. Just over a third of Iowans said the issue was "somewhat important" and 5 percent weren't sure.