August, 2010
Recycled Again:
Bottle bill chucked, seeks redemption next session
Last week, lawmakers scrambled to pass major bills before the formal session ended on Saturday. And that meant it was yet again time for the ritualistic slaughter of the good ol' bottle bill.
The current bottle law, which places a five cent deposit on most drink containers, was enacted in 1982, and got a crucial update in 1989 that funneled unclaimed deposits to the state in an invisible tax. Though additional bills that would revamp the law and expand its scope have been tossed around since then, they've never passed.
Rep. Alice Wolf, D-Cambridge, and Sen. Cynthia Stone Creem, D-Newton, reintroduced a bill that would add the deposit to water, sports drinks and iced teas at the beginning of the session, in January 2009, and about 150 cities and towns adopted resolutions supporting it. Similar legislation has been filed for the past 15 years.
The bill finally came out of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy with a favorable report on July 14th.
Maybe if you had a nickel deposit on that Aquafina you just chugged, you'd be more inclined to recycle and redeem it. But even if you were to say, "Fuck being green," and chuck the bottle, supporters of the bill would approve, since the state would get to keep your five cents and pad its budget.
"The experience is that, with deposits on them, between 70 and 80 percent of the bottles are returned, and without deposits on them, only about 20 percent of the bottles make their way into recycling. So it means that millions of bottles are going into landfills," says Wolf, who insists that the environmental benefits are just as important as the $18 to $20 million that the state would keep from unclaimed deposits.
Chris Flynn, president of the Massachusetts Food Association, a supermarket advocacy group, thinks the law "just costs too much and does too little," since it would force food and liquor stores to add more reverse vending machines to accommodate water bottles.
Flynn estimates that the bottle bill could cost stores three to five times more than a municipal recycling program would cost cities and towns.
The members of the joint committee tried to compensate for the toll on businesses by letting small stores with fewer than 10 employees remain exempt from bottle return duties.
Two weeks ago, when the bill was given to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, where it died of starvation, Creem clung to the last shred of hope that the law would pass, but, she conceded, "It becomes harder and harder to believe." Ways and Means chairman Sen. Steven Panagiotakos, D-Lowell, had his constituency to consider. "He feels that in representing Lowell and the communities on the border of New Hampshire, that he's not supportive of the bill," Creem said.
Border communities have consistently rejected the law out of concern that their residents will simply buy beverages tax-free in neighboring New Hampshire stores.
Creem is already gearing up for another round next session, when she plans to refile the bill "with hopes that the public momentum will finally result in an update to this law."
http://www.weeklydig.com/news-opinions/news-us/201008/recycled-again
