March 15, 2010
Chattanooga Times Free Press
(Editorial)
A great new bottle bill
Imagine there was a simple, no-cost way to create green jobs, fuel existing and new businesses, conserve resources, reduce litter, boost tourism, cut landfill costs and reduce litter and roadside blight. Not possible? Think again. Many states already do it. They have put in place what's widely known as "the bottle bill."
Tennessee has put off adopting the bottle bill since it was first introduced in 1979. Yet statewide polls consistently show that the vast majority of Tennesseans, of every age and political philosophy, support the bottle bill. Given all its benefits and wide public support, it's long past time for legislators to enact it.
That they haven't -- and the bill has been before them every year again since 2003 -- shows they are in thrall to the wishes and myths of special interest lobbyists who oppose the bottle bill, often for reasons that are no longer operable.
Among opponents are lobbyists for the malt beverage industry, grocery stores, the soft drink association, scrap dealers, chambers of commerce, trash haulers and, believe it or not, Tennessee Beautiful, which is afraid it will lose the litter tax that help funds its operations.
Under the current legislation, however, all these special interests are held harmless, and most would actually benefit. The eighth-of-a-penny container tax now used for little control (based on sales of volume rather than actual containers) would remain intact for use in broader beautification purposes.
All the bottle bill does is put in motion a nickel deposit redeemable fee on containers that distributors, vendors, retailers, citizens and scrap dealers ultimately get back as their beverage containers pass through the own chain of possession to the next entity in the chain. Everybody just passes the nickel down the line, and the redemption centers and recyclers all make a profit at the end by selling valuable resources that otherwise would use costly landfill space.
Most special interest groups apparently don't understand how the new bill works; if the did they wouldn't oppose it. Retailers, for example, would not have to use their floor space or pay employees to accept and pay back container deposits. Redemption centers that profit off their recycling sales would handle that. And, experience in other states shows, these centers would start-up (just as recycle centers would become profitable redemption centers) if the bill passes because two of the most commonly used containers -- aluminum and plastic -- are easily sold and highly profitable. The profits in other bottle-bill states easily offset the lagging market for glass.
Sponsors of the new bottle bill have turned in the evidence of that. A video they showed a legislative panel last week showed John Burnes, CEO of Marglen Industries, standing outside his carpet-fiber and container-resin manufacturing plant in north Georgia describing his desperate need for locally recycled plastic beverage bottles to make his products.
He now has to import such plastic from Canada and South America, at much higher costs, because the recycling market here is so weak. And it's so weak because neither Tennessee nor Georgia has a bottle bill. He says a bottle bill would serve him and let his factory expand, and add jobs.
Aluminum processors also place high value on beverage cans.
Scenic Tennessee's project director for the bottle bill act, Marge Davis, has accumulated an impressive list of advocates because of the convenience, ease and benefits of the new bottle bill legislation. Among supporters are the state's County Mayors Association; 13 county commissions that have gone on record; farmers, sportsmen and environmentalists; Mohawk Industries and Saint-Gobain Containers.
County mayors endorsed the bill because it would vastly reduce litter, improve tourism potential, prompt the start-up of 500 new businesses, and keep $50 million worth of container materials out of Tennessee's landfills.
Rep. Gerald McCormick of Hamilton County will chair a meeting of the legislature's House State Government Subcommittee tomorrow to vote on whether to let the bottle bill pass through his committee -- for the first time ever in Tennessee -- to proceed through the Legislature for further consideration. We urge Mr. McCormick to do Tennesseans a favor (80 percent, polls show, support a bottle bill) and help the move the bill, at long last, to a broader hearing.
It's time. Tennessee deserves it.
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/mar/15/3-15-t1-a-great-new-bottle-bill/
