June 25, 2008
Editorial
Container deposit law should be expanded
Frank Bonilla uses a forklift Friday to move containers of plastic bottles at the Granger recycling center in Lansing. Some would like to add bottles of noncarbonated beverages to the state's bottle deposit law.Michigan's 10-cent deposit on pop and beer containers has been highly popular with just about everyone except the people forced to handle the returns. Right on cue, those vendors are mounting resistance to a proposed extension of the deposit law that would include bottles and cans for noncarbonated beverages.
The Legislature is considering the change because when the deposit law was enacted 32 years ago, bottled water and various sports and energy drinks did not exist. They have since become a major part of the market. So have bottled tea and juice, which also escape deposits. That is too many loopholes for a state committed to fighting litter.
Grocers and other beverage retailers understandably wonder why they have been singled out to administer the thankless task of processing returns. One reason the onus has fallen on them is Michigan's relatively weak recycling culture. If recycling could become a way of life here, instead of an optional chore for the super socially conscious set, perhaps we could dispense with the bottle deposit law. But we are a long way from achieving that social advance.
Meanwhile, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, which got the original law enacted by ballot initiative, is pushing the Legislature to fortify it by including the exempt beverages, but would need a 75-percent vote of the Legislature to pass such an amendment. Short of that, the MUCC would have to take on the long, labor-intensive route of mounting another ballot measure. But as the Legislature has turned down many past movements to strengthen the law, perhaps a time is near for the MUCC to return to the voters.
One factor in its favor is the smashing success of the deposit law, without ever raising the original 10-cent returnable fee. Ninety-seven percent of containers sold with deposits are returned, while only 20 percent of plastic water bottles are voluntarily recycled. Nearly a billion noncarbonated drink containers are thrown away each year in this state.
Retailers do get help by receiving one-fourth of the money left from bottle deposits that are never claimed. And they have done a good job of adopting automated systems that keep actual work to a minimum.
Still, the deposits pose some burden, even though the reward is a cleaner, more attractive landscape with hugely reduced litter. But as the MUCC points out, we know we could be doing better.
http://www.mlive.com/flintjournal/voices/index.ssf/2008/06/flint_journal_editorial_contai.html
