March 9, 2008

West Branch students lobby for the environment
By Rob Daniel

WEST BRANCH — Justin Roth counts himself as a fan of Gov. Chet Culver’s plan to expand the state’s bottle deposit bill to include more containers.

“We saw how much it helped the environment,” said Justin, 11, a West Branch Middle School sixth-grader. “We knew how big of an impact it would have.”

Justin and several of his classmates will have a chance to make their point on including water and sports drink bottles in the bottle bill as well as on the importance of recycling compact fluorescent light bulbs and mercury-filled thermostats. On March 24, they will travel to the state Capitol in Des Moines with their teacher, Hector Ibarra, and lobby state legislators and officials from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

The students have been studying ways to better protect the environment throughout the year for Ibarra’s science class as well as doing project entries in the U.S. Army eCyberMission and Christopher Columbus science contests, Ibarra said.

After learning about the effects that certain legislation could have on environmental causes, Ibarra said the students were willing to lobby state legislators and government officials on ways to improve the protections against lobbyists with more economic interests.

“They would generate a larger awareness of what’s going on,” he said. “Kids generally don’t have an agenda. They see this as the world they’re going to inherit.”

In their studies, the students learned that while carbonated beverage bottles and aluminum have been covered by the bottle bill since its passage in 1978, bottles that had contained water, teas and sports drinks were not included. In January, Culver proposed expanding the bill to raise the deposit to 10 cents, with 1 cent going to stores that redeem the bottles and 1 cent to a state environmental fund. The bill was struck down last year, with the governor now pursuing an expansion to include non-carbonated beverage containers.

The students said the recycled bottles could be used numerous times rather than being thrown away.

“Less goes in the landfill,” said Brennan Nelson, 11, a sixth-grader.

The students also will discuss the recycling of CFL bulbs, which they said are 75 percent more effective than standard fluorescent light bulbs. Critics of the CFL bulbs said they are more expensive and are not safe because they contain mercury. Brennan, along with Justin and two other students, have entered the project to encourage recycling the bulbs in the eCyberMission contest.

Brennan said he hopes to see a law passed that would ban throwing away CFL bulbs to protect against mercury going into the environment.

“Our hope is in recycling them,” he said.

Ibarra said DNR officials are expected to study the bill before it returns to the legislature next year. He said he hopes the students can meet with either Culver or Lt. Gov. Patty Judge along with other legislators and DNR officials.

Reach Rob Daniel at 339-7360 or rdaniel@press-citizen.com.