May 6, 2010
Recycling bill clears Delaware House committee
New bottle fee would subsidize curb pickups
A proposed "universal" recycling bill easily cleared a House committee on Wednesday, positioning it for a possible final vote as early as today.
The measure, S.B. 234, would require all public and private waste haulers to offer household and commercial curbside recycling pickups at least once every other week, under a phase-in that would begin with single family homes on Sept. 15, 2011.
It also would scrap the state's widely criticized 5-cent bottle deposit -- which covers a small fraction of beverage containers -- and replace it with a temporary, non-refundable, 4-cent fee that would subsidize startup costs for the new program.
Gov. Jack Markell's administration presented the legislation as a compromise hammered out over several months following Markell's veto of a bill last year that would have scuttled the bottle deposit law. Markell said at the time that he would seek an alternative that also would help to improve the state's chronically low recycling rate.
Despite assurances that the fee in S.B. 234 would end after four years or after reaching $22 million in receipts, critics painted the 4-cent charge as a new, fast-tracked sales tax that unfairly exempts the majority of beverage containers sold in the state.
"It hasn't been fast-tracked," said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Michael Mulrooney, D-Pennwood. "I do think that it's been a fair and open process."
The bill has substantial support from environmental and hauler groups, and some retail and supermarket organizations. Some objections remain, however.
"It's not fair. It's not equitable. It makes no sense as part of the glue that holds this together," said David Swayze, a lobbyist for the Glass Packaging Institute. Swayze said that Delaware's constitution requires taxes to be "uniform upon the same class of subjects."
The bill and proposed fee apply only to carbonated beverage bottles smaller than two liters, with some exemptions. Cans, larger bottles, water, teas, sports drinks and similar beverages are sold without deposit.
Department of Natural Resources
and Environmental Control Secretary Collin P. O'Mara said that only about 12 percent of deposits are ever re-claimed, leaving about 88 percent as cash windfalls for manufacturers and distributors. Retailers, meanwhile, have long objected to the expense and clutter of redeeming, storing and returning deposit bottles.
Mulrooney said he planned to review scheduling for a full House vote, possibly as early as Thursday. Sponsors want to at least assure that the measure gets to a vote before lawmakers recess on May 13 for a two-week budget-drafting break, he added. The state Senate passed the measure last week by a 17-3 margin.
O'Mara said the change would help boost state recycling rates, now at 12 to 15 percent for households and 30 percent overall. Markell's bill calls for a 50 percent municipal waste rate and 72 percent overall rate by 2015, rising to 60 percent and 85 percent overall by 2020.
http://www.sparkweekly.com/article/20100506/NEWS02/5060321/1006/NEWS
