November 15, 2009
TN lawmakers want to cut waste and litter in state
Panel considers Pay-as-you-throw and can deposit
Is an extra nickel for a can of soda too high a price to encourage recycling? What about paying by the pound to throw garbage away?
A panel of state lawmakers is discussing those proposals and several others in an effort to cut waste and litter in Tennessee.
Backed by recyclers such as Alcoa Inc. and some environmentalists, the campaign calls for upping the cost of throwing away all those drink cans, wrappers and other materials that wind up in the state's landfills or strewn along its bucolic roadways.
But it has run into firm resistance from a coalition of bottlers and retailers. They say the state should stick instead to efforts that promote recycling.
"We support litter reduction," said John Kelly, chief operating officer of Mountain Empire Oil Co., which operates the Roadrunner chain of convenience stores. "We just think there are better ways to get there."
The discussion has grown out of an ongoing debate in the General Assembly over whether to impose a 5-cent deposit on the 4.3 billion cans and bottles consumed in Tennessee. In such a program, consumers would be able to get back their deposits by turning their empties over to a redemption center, which would then recycle them.
The legislature's Fiscal Review Committee has estimated that the state would collect as much as $258 million from the program. Because not every empty container would be returned, the committee estimates state government would keep about $5 million a year once deposits are paid out.
Supporters of container deposits say they are among the most effective ways to get people to recycle more. The 11 states that have adopted container deposits have boosted their recycling rates on those containers to 80 percent or more; the 39 that do not recycle cans and bottles have a rate of 33 percent.
"Deposits work," said Greg Wittbecker, Alcoa's director of corporate metal recycling strategy. "The question is, what's the effective cost of those schemes?"
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20091115/NEWS02/911150362/Lawmakers+look+to+cut+trash
