April 28, 2009
House panel seeks to extend bottle bill to more containers
Juice, tea and sports drinks may be part of the expansion, but a nickel deposit would remain
SALEM — The Legislature took its biggest step of the session Tuesday to revamp Oregon’s landmark Bottle Bill when a House panel approved a plan to add juice, tea and sports drinks to the containers already covered by the law.
House Bill 2184, which now awaits approval by the full House, would make the second such expansion of Bottle Bill containers in two years. The 2007 Legislature added water bottles to the beer and soda containers that have been covered by the first-in-the-nation Bottle Bill since its 1971 adoption.
The latest wave of expansion would not occur until 2013. The Bottle Bill’s per-container deposit would remain at a nickel — just as it was 38 years ago — but could increase to a dime in 2016 if recycling rates do not exceed 80 percent.
Another proposal to rework the Bottle Bill could be coming to the surface soon. Sen. Jackie Dingfelder, D-Portland, said she is pushing legislation that would require that unredeemed deposits — which total between $20 million and $30 million annually — go to the state general fund. Currently, that money is retained by the beverage industry.
Unclaimed deposits are the money that the industry collects when customers buy beverages but don’t redeem because their empties are never returned.
“It’s so money that is the citizens’ remains the citizens’,” Dingfelder said, explaining her support for the proposal, which would put Oregon on the same path as other cash-strapped Bottle Bill states. Connecticut this year made unclaimed deposits state property, and Massachusetts is considering doing the same. A similar proposal, which shifts 80 percent of unclaimed deposits, passed this year in New York.
Joe Gilliam, president of the Northwest Grocery Association, opposes such a move. He said those unredeemed deposits cover much — but not all — of the costs that beverage retailers and wholesalers collectively bear in order to collect, sort and recycle customers’ empties.
He said the scrap value of the glass, plastic and metal containers they return helps with the cost, but that industries also pay out of their own tills to run the program. They would pay more from their own pockets if the deposits go to state government, but ultimately would recoup those costs from consumers, Gilliam said.
“We would have to come up with some kind of surcharge or handling fees, or increase grocery prices, to make up the difference,” he said.
Dingfelder said retailers can make their case to the Legislature if they need a portion of the unredeemed deposits to pay for their Bottle Bill costs. But, she added, that money is badly needed for other public needs: the state’s own spending for basics such as education, public safety and human services, and to educate the public about the Bottle Bill and to monitor recycling rates for containers covered by the law.
Gilliam said grocery stores also oppose the Bottle Bill update — expanding the bill to include juice, tea and sports drinks — that was approved in committee Tuesday. The beverage and grocery industries already are overloaded by new changes under way, he said. Water bottles have been covered by the law since January, and the industry is working on a plan to develop the first of 90 “redemption centers” that eventually would take the place of grocery stores as return locations for customers’ empties.
“We’re saying, just stand down. There’s no need to rush it,” Gilliam said. “Just give us some breathing room.”
Rep. Ben Cannon, chairman of the committee that approved HB 2184, said he had the bill reworked to address industry concerns. “We attempted to find common ground on the proposal while still producing a bill that would increase recycling in Oregon significantly,” the Portland Democrat said.
Another compromise, Can-non said, is that the bill no longer requires grocery stores to take back up to 24 empties per customer per day after they launch a local redemption center.
Rep. Phil Barnhart, D- Eugene, said he is concerned that consumers will be inconvenienced if they can’t take a small number of empties back to the grocery store but must instead make a special trip to a redemption center.
Gilliam said his industry is working hard, and planning to spend $20 million a year, to make sure customers are satisfied with the redemption centers.
“It’s in our interest to make them convenient,” said Gilliam, whose grocers have long complained that handling bottle returns is a messy responsibility that takes up limited store space. “We’re working on ways for the consumer to just buzz in and buzz out. We’ve committed to that.”
http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/updates/12782693-55/story.csp
