Culver continues to push bottle bill with help from students
By AMY LORENTZEN
DES MOINES — Nearly a dozen teenagers joined Gov. Chet Culver on Wednesday to call for expansion of Iowa’s bottle bill to include water, tea, juice and sports drink containers.
The teens from Mason City presented photographs of such containers that had been tossed into trash cans or left on the ground as proof that many of the bottles were not being recycled.
‘‘The bottom line is we want to modernize the bottle bill,’’ Culver said at a Statehouse news conference. ‘‘We think 30 years is too long to not make any major changes to this historic piece of legislation.’’
Culver has pushed hard for the bottle bill expansion, a move he argues is supported by most Iowans. In response to opposition, however, he has scaled back his initial proposal to double the deposit per container to 10 cents and keep part of the money to fund a state environmental program.
The governor’s plan now would keep the deposit at 5 cents, but expand the law to include the additional containers. Distributors would pay 2 cents per container — instead of the current penny — to retailers who handle the bottles and cans. Consumers who redeem their containers would continue to get back their entire deposit.
Culver said about 330 million beverage containers sold in Iowa each year aren’t redeemable under the 1978 law. Many of the bottles can be recycled through communities’ curbside recycling programs.
‘‘I think the overwhelming majority of Iowans agree that we should do something about getting those 330 million bottles and cans out of the landfills and out of the ditches and off the roads and sidewalks,’’ he said.
A bill calling for the expansion survived a legislative deadline this week when it passed 13-7 out of the House Environmental Protection Committee.
Some groups have continued to oppose expanding the bottle bill because of the extra pressure they said it would put on retailers to handle more containers.
Taylor Johnson, a junior at Mason City High School, said the bill directly relates to kids her age who consume lots of sports drinks and bottled water at athletic events and other school activities. She said many of the containers get thrown away.
‘‘If they’re not left behind, they’re usually just thrown in the trash on the way out the door,’’ she said as she held up a plastic tea bottle. ‘‘This bottle can be recycled in the state of California and a few others, so I don’t understand why we can’t do that in Iowa also.’’
Johnson added that it’s a way for teenagers to earn a little extra cash.
‘‘If bottles can be recycled more then it’s more motivation for teenagers to take bottles back because we know we get something back in return,’’ she said.
Although Culver’s proposal no longer includes funding for the Resource Enhancement and Protection Program, or REAP, he said he expects lawmakers to fund the program. He said he likely wouldn’t sign a budget that doesn’t fully fund the program.
‘‘We want to pressure the Legislature to make sure before the end of the session that we fund that at the very highest level possible,’’ he said.
http://www.timesrepublican.com/page/content.detail/id/503562.html
