August 26, 2010
Venable: One more push for a 'bottle bill'
What if a Tennessee lawmaker crafted legislation that would (a) generate millions of dollars in self-sustaining revenue, (b) create an estimated 1,500 jobs and (c) drastically improve the beauty of the landscape?
It probably would get bottled-up in committee and never see the light of day, that's what.
At least it would if history repeats itself like it has since 2004.
But Marge Davis, ever the optimist, thinks that won't be the case this time around.
"This is a grassroots effort that has been gaining support from citizens and industry alike," she says. "We're making an all-out effort to get it passed."
"It" is a law that would require a 5-cent deposit on most bottled and canned beverages. Although this initiative has proved quite successful in 10 states, primarily in the Northeast, it has gained little traction in the South.
Which may help explain why roadways and ditches in Maine, Connecticut and Vermont aren't axle-deep in bottles and cans the way they are in Dixie.
It is a gross understatement to describe Marge Davis as tenacious. Over the last six years, she has crisscrossed Tennessee and attended innumerable meetings on behalf of a "bottle bill." She estimates she has spent $50,000 of her own money in this effort.
"It's been quite a learning experience," the 56-year-old Davis told me from her home in Mount Juliet. "I've talked to people from every walk of life, every political party, every race, every ideology. Eighty percent of them support this legislation."
Such consensus-building, she believes, has resulted in a much stronger proposal.
"What we started with six years ago was not a good bill," she admitted. "It was a mishmash of laws from other states. But we have worked with every major stakeholder and done a lot of changing. That's one reason so many industry groups are now behind it."
This isn't your father's old "Coke bottle" deposit process.
Under the new proposal, grocers and convenience stores would not be required to buy used bottles and cans from customers. They could if they wanted to, but it wouldn't be mandatory. Instead, the free market would take over via a network of hundreds of independent redemption centers across the state.
These facilities would refund the 5-cent deposit to consumers, keep upwards of another penny per container for handling, and then be permitted to sell the glass, aluminum and plastic to smelters and other wholesale processors. As a result, Davis says, the volume of recycled material, much-needed by industry, would be dramatically increased.
She estimates that the recycled returns (now about 10 percent) would jump to 80 percent. Considering 4.5 billion bottles and cans are sold annually in Tennessee alone, we're talking megatons of recyclable metal, glass and plastic.
Obviously, Davis isn't fighting a one-person battle. She enjoys a network of widely diverse interests - outdoor clubs to business associations, agricultural groups to county officials - that also are pushing for passage.
After being drowned out in the past by the beverage and grocery lobbies, they just might prevail when the General Assembly convenes in 2011. For the sake of cleaner roadways, I hope so.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/aug/26/one-more-push-for-a-bottle-bill/
