Editorial

No need to fix the bottle bill

As though it doesn’t have much else to do, the legislature is fiddling with the bottle bill again.

Sure, if you think about it hard, you can come up with a few snags in the law. Not all containers are returned. The deposit on beer and pop bottles and cans hasn’t been raised since the law took effect more than 35 years ago. The return machines at major stores are a pain to use, especially when you have to wait for somebody who hauls in a thousand cans to return at once.

But all those are minor irritations.

Bottles and cans can be recycled with the household recycling. Nothing could be easier. You give up the deposit, but you save the time and hassle of returning the bottles and cans to the store. It’s a fair exchange, especially if you don’t have all the time in the world.

An even better idea, if you have the space: Save up the containers for the next time a neighborhood kid comes around in a bottle drive to raise money for the band or a class trip.

Legislators have dropped the idea of adding wine and liquor bottles to the law. Smart move, that. Those containers are much less plentiful than the ones already covered, and there’s no possible savings in energy or anything else if a bottle that used to contain genuine Bordeaux has to be shipped back to France.

Mainly, though, where’s the popular demand for doing something about the bottle bill? Where are the demonstrations on the Capitol steps? Where is the initiative petition that would seek to change the law?

Most of us seem to be fairly content with the law as it is. We have learned to live with it.

The bottle bill is fun to talk about because it affects just about every consumer in the state. But it doesn’t affect any one consumer much. And for all its flaws, it more or less works pretty well.

Legislators should leave it alone and look for a real problem to solve. (hh)

http://www.democratherald.com/articles/2009/03/24/news/opinion/7edi01_bottle.txt