Editorial
Updating the bottle bill
One trick to increased recycling is making it easy. That's why curbside recycling, which requires no effort beyond putting the recyclables in a separate bin, helps boost recycling rates. The second trick is to make recycling pay off. "Pay as you throw" collection, where you must pay a buck or more per bag of trash but recycling is free, is an effective motivator for recycling.
But an even greater incentive is a deposit system, which not only pays the user five cents a can or bottle but mobilizes a small army of trash-pickers to collect those containers whose users casually throw their deposits away. Nearly 30 years' experience has demonstrated the effectiveness of Massachusetts' bottle bill in reducing litter.
But that limited law is now outdated and with the advent of plastic bottles and aluminum cans for nearly every drinkable liquid imaginable, it is time to consider expanding the returnable mandate to include juices, sports drinks, noncarbonated beverages and even some designer waters that are making up an increasingly large part of our growing solid waste mass.
Studies have shown that the 11 states that have bottle bills have a markedly lower rate of litter and higher rate of recycling than the other 39. A 2002 study by Businesses and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling found states with container deposit laws recycled an average of 490 beverage containers per capita in 1999, while non-deposit states recycled an average of 191 per capita.
In Massachusetts, a study in the first five years after the bottle bill passed showed litter was reduced by 30 to 35 percent. In addition, the bottle bill had a significant impact on lowering childhood injuries. The Emergency Services of Children's Hospital in Boston tracked lacerations in the three years before the bottle bill was enacted.
But manufacturers, trying to keep up with changing lifestyles, have begun making a veritable ocean of drinks available in plastic, bottles and cans, most with no deposit. That is beginning to mar our environment much the way it did before the bottle bill.
In one somewhat unscientific study at the annual Charles River Cleanup five years ago, beverage containers were sorted out of a random sample of trash bags that were returned by cleanup volunteers at the Hatch Shell and the state's ice rink in Nonantum. The count: non-returnable beverage containers, 431 (81.78 percent); returnable or deposit containers, 96 (18.22 percent). That's a nearly 4.5 to 1 ratio and proof that the bottle bill should be expanded.
There's an argument against redundancy in recycling. You may conveniently put all the aluminum cans and bottles food comes in on the curb, but then you've got to drive the deposit cans and bottles back to the store to reclaim your nickels. Deposit systems are expensive as well. Redemption centers must keep track of which distributor each bottle or can comes from to match deposits with returns. Studies show the process costs an average of 3.6 cents per container.
In an ideal world, everyone would recycle at the curb, carrying home empty containers to put them in the right bin. All communities would move to pay-as-you-throw to increase recycling rates.
But we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a world where non-deposit bottles and cans are a large and growing portion of the beverage market and the waste stream, a world where plastic water bottles are ubiquitous - and too often left by the side of the road.
Consumer tastes and beverage marketing have changed since the bottle bill became law in 1982. It's time lawmakers updated it to address today's beverages - and today's litter.
http://www.milforddailynews.com/archive/x1479982275/Editorial-Updating-the-bottle-bill
