February 19, 2009
Bottle bill stays afloat
Supporters of the Bottle Bill will tell lawmakers why it needs to pass at a presentation in the legislature today.
The bills lead sponsor, Delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer, D-Monongalia, plans to reintroduced the bill this year even though it has failed several times before.
This pleases people like Morgantown resident Tim Terman. He leads kayak tours on the Monongahela River during the warmer months of the year. But when he’s not in his kayak, you might find him collecting trash along the riverbank.
“I started a program three years ago to address the issue by going out on the river, and going along the banks, bagging this stuff up and taking in it for the solid waste authority to dispose of,” Terman said.
Terman sees a lot of bottles floating downstream. That’s why he supports the proposed bottle bill. The bill would require consumers to pay a deposit on beverage containers. They could get the deposit back when the empty bottle is returned to a state-certified redemption site.
“So it gives you somewhat of an incentive to get these things back, and it’s a recycling incentive too. A lot of people just recycle because they think it’s a good thing, but if there’s a monetary incentive as well, that’s going to help,” said Terman.
The bill applies to glass, plastic, and aluminum beverage containers that are less than one gallon in size. Dairy products are exempt.
Bottles that require a deposit would have a special barcode, according to Delegate Fleischauer.
“The redemption center would scan, because one of the things is, we don’t want to have fraud, we want to have people turning in bottles and deal with the litter in our state, they would scan that and then you would get your deposit back, five or ten cents, there are different amounts in different states,” said Fleishchauer.
Fleischauer says the bill could be amended this year so that some of the deposit goes back to solid waste authorities.
The bottle bill is intended to reduce litter and increase recycling, but Monongalia County Solid Waste Authority member, Bob McConnell, says it will not do either.
“It will only increase recycling approximately three percent of the total recycling stream,” said McConnell. “Will it reduce litter? Probably, but it will not really reduce the cost of removing the litter from highways, because only the bottles are removed from that litter.”
Larry Oleska, owner of Mona Supply, a beer distributor in Morgantown, is worried that the bill would drive business across the state line.
“Because there’s no deposit in the other state and they’re going to save money. When they go across [the state line] they’re not only going to buy that product, if they’re in the store, they’re going to buy their groceries,” said Oleska.
Delegate Fleischauer says the program would need about $20 million in seed money.
Both Oleska and McConnell say that money would be better spent on improving voluntary, comprehensive recycling programs and on recycling education in the state.
Audio and video clips available at:
http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=8215
