Letter to the Editor

Expand deposit on beverage containers

While walking with our dog around the neighborhood, I started picking up the discarded beverage containers with the deposit on them. (A nickel is a nickel.)

After our stroll is finished and we return home, I generally have a bag or two of these cans or bottles, collecting them in order to turn them in for cash or coins.

After a passage of time, it was brought to my attention that others are walking or riding their bikes around the block and nearby roads doing the same as I am.

To me, the number of people coming through the neighborhood does seem to have increased. Unfamiliar faces have popped up in the area, so they must be covering a lot of ground in order to pick up these beverage containers for the deposit on them.

The place that I go to turn these liquid holders in for money has gotten busier. Now you have to wait for open machines where before one could go in, insert the beverage containers into the machines and leave. The recycle containers that people put out on the weekly trash day also appear to be less full then they once were. Residents must be keeping the ones that hold value now to turn them in later.

When the economy picks up, I hope the people continue this practice, in that it helps keep our streets and fields clean.

Dr. Laurie Robertson-Lorant once submitted an op-ed ("Bottle bill for a new era," July 13) stating that water bottles, sports drinks and juice packages should now be required to have a deposit on them. Maybe wine bottles, hard liquor containers and the little nip bottles should be stamped with it also.

David R. Macomber

Westport

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