April 25, 2009
State weighs recycling options
HARTFORD -- Thirty one years after Connecticut adopted its bottle-deposit law, the way the state recycles aluminum and plastic containers is at a crossroads.
Lawmakers in February adopted legislation that would expand the redemption system to include water bottles, to discourage littering while raising millions of dollars a year through the unclaimed nickels -- called escheats -- from people too lazy to take them back to the store.
So does the state want to increase recycling, or make more money from unclaimed deposits? Both, for now.
Environmental officials say it's a way for Connecticut to support a green recycling program, while giving the state a flow of greenbacks at a time when every few million dollars counts in the fiscal crisis.
"What we have in Connecticut is a very positive combination of redemption and recycling to remove bottles from the waste stream," said Dennis Schain, spokesman for the DEP.
But the quasi-public program that oversees recycling, the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, says that if the state wants to get seriously green, it should abandon the nickel deposits on cans and bottles and expand curbside collection.
"We should go to single-stream curbside recycling because it is the easiest and most effective means there is," said Paul Nonnenmacher, spokesman for the CRRA. "People like the convenience of curbside recycling rather than schlepping to the store, hoping the machines are not already full and there are no lines at them."
Last year, for the first time since the nickel deposits went into effect in 1978, the General Assembly finally ordered an accounting of the deposit program and escheats, then seized control of the entire bottle-deposit fund through a Department of Environmental Protection escrow account.
Beer and soda distributors had controlled the cash and kept unclaimed deposits as a windfall for 30 years.
The expansion of the so-called bottle bill to include water bottles under 3 liters in size was supposed to take effect April 1.
But amid industry concerns that it would take months for bottles to be relabeled, Gov. M. Jodi Rell granted extensions on the program's start until Oct. 1 and wrote off a projected $8 million in soda, beer and water escheats that could have been collected in the seven months between April and October.
Stan Sorkin, executive director of the Connecticut Food Association, which represents grocers and supermarkets, said last week that even with the October rollout, water companies from around the world may have trouble meeting the schedule to relabel bottles "CT 5 cent deposit."
"There might also be a problem in terms of the need for additional machines," said Sorkin, noting that estimates project a 33 percent increase or more in returns for redemption once the deposit on water bottles starts.
Sorkin hopes that before the end of the legislative session on June 3, lawmakers look at possibly increasing the handling fees for recyclables. Since 1978, it has remained at 1.5 cents for each beer bottle and 2 cents for soda. Water bottles will get a 2-cent handling fee as well.
Sorkin is asking for an upgrade to 2.5 cents, which is slightly more than the 2.25 cents that Massachusetts handlers get.
Currently, about 500 million water bottles are sold in the state each year. Nonnenmacher said that the 7,200 tons of water bottles the CRRA collects in household garbage annually represents about 1 percent of the 3.5-million ton waste stream.
"It all gets down to the consumer in peaks and valleys," Sorkin said. "Lines at the redemption machines mean unhappy customers. The supermarket customer will have an inconvenience factor and the shopping trip becomes drudgery."
Brian J. Flaherty, a former Connecticut lawmaker who is director of public affairs for Nestlé Waters North America Inc., said last week that Oregon gave their distributors a year and a half to comply when they added water to that state's redemption program.
"We got six months and we're working overtime to get there," Flaherty said, adding that labels have to be redesigned and new UPC codes have to be established so consumers can scan them in the reverse vending machines.
Timing the relabeled products for market is another obstacle.
"The tough issue is fraud," Flaherty said. "Someone will always try to game this law. That was our experience in Maine. There will be some cross-border fraudulent redemption."
Nestlé's Poland Spring division is the biggest-selling water in the Northeast.
Flaherty said the whole issue could be fixed if the state were to adopt the single-stream recycling program, in which homeowners are given 64-gallon cans, into which they can put all items, from cans and bottles to magazines and newspaper.
"You have to notice that the state wants to balance its budget on the hopes that people don't recycle," Flaherty said. "We want our bottles recycled in the best way possible."
"Innovative initiatives like single stream have the promise to increase recycling rates," said Schain, the DEP spokesman. "But it still doesn't negate the value of a redemption system." He said there is an issue of possible contamination of material that is put into one large can, but added volume could make up for it.
Nonnenmacher, the CRRA official, said that there are currently about 4,400 homes in Hartford and dozens of towns across the state, including Oxford, Beacon Falls and Bethany, that have single-stream recycling.
In the Hartford pilot project, recyclable tonnage has doubled, he said.
"If they're really serious about getting it out of the waste stream, we have to go to single stream," he said. "There's great interest in it because, it's proven that it works." Rep. Richard Roy, D-Milford, co-chairman of the legislative Environment Committee, said Friday that a single-stream bill is still alive in this session of the General Assembly.
But for the short term, at least, the current curbside program and the expanded bottle bill will both be in effect.
"I think they complement one another," Roy said. "Eventually, we'll have the single stream. In time, bottle deposits will seem archaic."
http://www.connpost.com/ci_12228091
