December 30, 2008
Editorial
New law brings state's bottle bill up to date
But our next step should be going without bottled water
As of Jan. 1, your plastic water bottles will no longer be trash or even fodder for your recycle bin. They'll be worth 5 cents apiece under Oregon's expanded bottle bill, which adds water to the list of beverages with deposits on containers.
That's long overdue. In 1971, when our state passed the nation's first bottle bill, no one could have dreamed that Oregonians would pay a buck or more for a plastic bottle containing free tap water.
Now those bottles are a growing problem for the state's landfills and Marion County's trash burner at Brooks. We pay to dispose of them one way or another. Oregonians can invest in more landfills and other technologies when our waste facilities are overwhelmed by stuff. Or we can adopt more environmentally ways such as recycling as much as possible.
The second alternative makes far more sense. Plastic water bottles can be shredded and eventually reprocessed into fleece garments, decking materials and other goods. But first Oregonians need to break ourselves of the long habit of tossing these containers in the most convenient trash can.
The folks at the Department of Environmental Quality hope that the nickel deposit will help increase the recovery rate for water bottles to about 60 percent. That's a modest goal. It's far short of the pop and beer containers that get returned for deposits at grocery stores.
Frankly, we should be able to hit the higher figure. The original bottle bill has become part of who Oregonians are. This new law simply brings it up to date. We ought to be able to take pride in a sensible system that operates without government subsidy and that has managed to work well for nearly four decades.
But once we learn to sort out the water bottles and feed them into the recycling machine at the grocery store, why not go one step better: that is, do without bottled water?
Think about it: No petroleum needed to create the bottles in the first place and truck them across the U.S. No petroleum needed to take them back to the store or to haul used bottles from the store to the recycling center. No overhead for sorting, keeping track of deposits, grinding up plastic and making it into new things. Reducing use is better than recycling, hands down.
Rep. Vicki Berger, R-Salem, the sponsor of the expanded bottle bill, does without bottled water. It's a point of pride for her. She carries her own water in a metal container; she drinks from a fountain. She enjoys Salem's tap water — recognized as being among the nation's best — instead of water trucked in from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Why not follow her example?
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20081230/OPINION/812300306/1049
