June 10, 2010
Delaware scuttles bottle bill, enacts "universal recycling"
Delaware's beverage container redemption program is being phased out, replaced by "universal curbside" recycling across the First State. Governor Jack Markell yesterday signed Senate Bill 234, which establishes "Universal Recycling" in Delaware, though critics say that it is replacing a weak bottle bill — aluminum was exempt from the overturned program due to attaining collection targets, for example — with the new curbside program.
The law comes following a years-long political battle over curbside pickup, decades after neighboring Pennsylvania and New Jersey have implemented curbside collection of recyclable materials. Last year Markell vetoed a bill that would have simply shuttered the state's bottle deposit.
The new law replaces the nickel bottle deposit, beginning December 1st, with a four cent fee on all non-aluminous beverage containers which will support the recycling program. The curbside service begins September 2011 with municipalities and waste haulers providing the container and the collection. The four cent fee ends by the beginning of 2014 or when the fees total $22 million, whichever comes first.
Additionally, the bill sets recycling rate goals — a 50 percent municipal waste recycling goal to be reached by 2015, and 60 percent by 2020.
Residents can still return beverage containers for their deposit until Feb 1, 2011.
"We have the potential to reduce the amount of waste going into the landfill by more than 300,000 tons per year," said Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary Collin O'Mara at the signing of the bill, held at the Cherry Island Landfill in east Wilmington.
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