Editorial

All bottled up

It's not sunk, but the New York bill to require nickel deposits on water bottles is awash in political bile, industry self-interest and twisted priorities. Gov David Paterson and the Legislature need to fix the bill, which was supposed to become law today. After all, it is intended to help the environment, expand recycling, and, frankly, make the state some money - all sensible motives despite concerted efforts by opponents to thoroughly confuse them.

Lawmakers and Paterson passed the bottle bill in April as part of the state budget. It expands the current 5-cent deposit on just beer and soda containers to bottles of water. The original bottle bill was created in 1982. Advocates like the New York Public Interest Research Group have been campaigning for at least seven years to expand the deposit requirement to non-carbonated beverage containers like water, iced tea and sport drinks. They have grown to be at least 34 percent of the total beverage market, according to the Container Recycling Institute, citing 2006 data.

The success of the original law is beyond question: Roadside litter has been reduced by as much as 70 percent, environmentalists estimate, and recycling rates have been dramatically increased. And despite grumbling by the beverage and grocers industries about the original bill, they benefited from unclaimed deposits in the tens of millions of dollars each year; in 2006 they totaled an estimated $144 million.

Not quite so big

The natural next step to improve recycling efforts was to extend the law to bottles and cans of noncarbonated beverages; more than 4.6 billion were sold in New York in 2006. But industry lobbyists were strong, and effective. This year's final bottle bill was not quite as "big and better'' as environmentalists wanted - it only applied to bottles of water. Nevertheless, single-serve bottles of water are the fastest-growing beverage choice in the United States; nearly 2.5 billion bottles of water are sold in New York every year.

And this year's bill did something else: It would send unclaimed deposits to the state, which faces a multibillion-dollar deficit, and use some of the revenue for environmental protection. To make the bottlers and distributors a little happier, it also increased the handling fee that they pay retailers and redemption centers from 2 cents per container to 3.5 cents.

But the water bottle industry was furious. Plaintiffs, including the International Bottled Water Association, found an achilles heel in the law, arguing that labeling requirements in the measure violate the U.S. Constitution because the law seeks to regulate commerce among states - beverage makers and distributors must place a bar code on water bottles prohibiting their sale in other states. Wednesday, a federal judge agreed, issuing a temporary injunction. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Griesa ruled that the plaintiffs did not have enough time to comply with the law, and told the state and bottlers they needed to work out a reasonable time frame for the law to take effect.

A miffed Kennedy

Such objections weren't the only ones used to blur the issues. Robert Kennedy Jr., attorney for the environmental group Riverkeeper and also a water bottler himself, contended with others that the water-bottle-only addition would wreak all kinds of havoc: It would force consumers to turn from bottled water to noncarbonated beverages, which contain sugar and damage their health; municipal recycling program would lose "critical revenue'' that water bottles now generate; and the millions of dollars in unclaimed deposits would go into the state's black hole of budgetary needs.

There may be some truths there, but get real: Recycling laws are achieved in increments - it took 27 years to expand the original one. Sure, it would have been better if the most recent bill had included other noncarbonated beverage containers. But the industry and its lobbyists were too strong, and the Legislature and Paterson buckled. Now they are at work trying to fix the April bill - they should, quickly and reasonably.

The central component of the expanded bill cannot be forgotten: Encouraging the recycling of water bottles via required nickel deposits benefits the environment. Period.

http://lohud.com/article/20090601/OPINION/906010304/1015/OPINION01