February 23, 2009
Bottle bill fight
Walter Veselka of Reedsville writes:
I listened to Emily Corio's story on the bottle bill and thought it was very well done...except for one glaring omission. When the man from the Mon County Solid Waste Authority said the bottle bill would only increase recycling by 3%...why didn't she ask how he got that number? Keep up the good reporting, but make people reveal where the "knowledge" comes from.
Bob McConnell responds:
As far as the source of material, I took all material from various websites supporting the bottle bill. The specific information concerning the 3 percent reduction in waste going to the landfill came from http://www.bottlebill.org/about/mythfact.htm.
The response to myth #6 says that states with no bottle bill recycle 191 bottles per person per year and states with a bottle bill recycle 490 bottles per person per year.
In addition, the response to myth #1 says that beverage containers make up 4.4 percent of the total MSW, municipal solid waste.
Because recyclables make up about 50 percent of total MSW, beverage containers make up 8.8 percent of all recyclables. Several places including the WV bottle bill website says that typical redemption rates in the bottle bill states are 70 percent. If we start with 490 bottles per person as being 70 percent redemption, that implies 700 bottles used per person per year, a number consistent with the expected total deposits by West Virginia residents in a year on the WV bottle bill website.
The increase from 191 to 490 isan increase of 299 bottles per person per year, or a 42.7 percent increase in the number of bottles recycled. This amounts to 42.7percent of 8.8 percent of recyclables, or a 3.76 percenincrease in the total recycling stream.
The conclusion I drew about the financial impact on state residents is about as complicated. The projected redemption rates is based upon redemption rates of states that now have a bottle bill and comparing characteristics of the states to WV, based on population density and personal income. From there, I simply calculated the amount of money taken in as deposits, the money paid out for redemption, the money paid to redemption centers for handling, and found significant deficits that would have to be made up from taxes. I have attached a more complete discussion showing in more detail how these numbers were arrived at.
http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=8253
