February 12, 2011
Lawmakers discuss repealing Iowa's bottle bill
A bill that would repeal Iowa’s 1978 bottle bill will advance to the full House Environmental Protection Committee, despite advocates on both sides of the issue saying they never asked for a repeal.
“We need to look at curbside recycling,” House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, said Thursday. “I’m not under any illusion that that’s a bill that ends up on the governor’s desk this year. But I think that’s a discussion that needs to take place. When the bottle bill was put in place ... it clearly has served the state extremely well, but no one even contemplated curbside recycling at that point in time.”
Bills proposed in both the Iowa House and Senate would repeal Iowa's beverage container control law, the anti-litter law more commonly known as the "bottle bill" which requires Iowans to pay a 5-cent deposit on cans and bottles for all carbonated and alcoholic beverages. That money is returned if Iowans later return the empty containers to a grocery store or redemption center.
Rep. Ross Paustian, R-Walcott, a farmer and the bill’s floor manager, said Thursday that the bill will be brought out of subcommittee next week and taken to the full committee, although he acknowledges that it could possibly die there.
“I think it’s a mess at the grocery stores,” Paustian said. “My daughter used to work at a couple of Hy-Vees so she knows firsthand what it’s like and she’s relayed that to me many times. I’d like to see the grocery stores do what they do best, and that’s sell healthy, wholesome, safe foods. So it’s a burden for them. I just think with the recycling programs we have, we are way ahead of when the bill was passed. We had nothing back then.”
The Iowa Grocery Industry Association and the Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Stores of Iowa are among those backing the bill.
“We think that it’s time to move to a different system,” said Scott Sundstrom, a lobbyist for the Iowa Grocery Industry Association. “We have never asked for a repeal of the bottle bill standing alone. We think we need to go a better system.”
Sundstrom said grocers have concerns about bottle redemption centers. He said it may have served a purpose at the time it was enacted in raising consciousness about recycling and litter, but he said that goal has succeeded.
“As folks who run grocery stores, having those returned containers in the stores, they are dirty, they take up a lot of space,” he said. “We think the system overall is quite inefficient compared to alternatives like curbside recycling and it’s less consumer-friendly.”
But Sara Bixby, director of the South Central Iowa Solid Waste Agency, argued against repeal of the bottle bill.
“By repealing the bottle bill and going with something as proposed here, you’re gutting everything that we’ve done for the last 20 years on our current recycling programs, on our current composting programs,” she said. “This is not the right place to start.”
Jim Obradovich, a lobbyist for the Iowa Recycling Association, Redemption Centers of Iowa, Iowa Society of Solid Waste Operations and Iowa Environmental Council, said repealing Iowa’s bottle bill would close 70 redemption centers and cause at least 200 people to lose their jobs.
“I don’t think that’s the policy we want to have in the state of Iowa, especially during tough economic times, passing legislation that specifically closes these facilities and put these people out of work,” he said.
Obradovich compared the bottle bill to his 1997 Jeep.
“It’s by no means as good-looking as the 2011s and the 2012s are going to look. But earlier this week when it was 20 below, I went outside and that old Jeep started up and it got me where I needed to go. And it’s a dependable ride and it gets me where I need to go,” Obradovich. “And that’s the best analogy I can draw to our bottle bill. It’s not pretty, by no means, if we start over, would it look a lot flashier? Absolutely. But it gets us where we need to go in this state.”
The proposed legislation would prohibit the final disposal of beverage containers in a sanitary landfill. It would more than double fines for littering on public highways from $70 to $150. The fine for littering in a state park or preserve would also more than double, from $30 to $75.
A litter cleanup grant fund would also be created. All of the money from the scheduled fines would be deposited in the general fund, with half of the money going to the Department of Transportation for litter cleanup and the other half going to the Department of Natural Resources for the fund.
An estimated 86 percent of beverage containers, or 1.65 billion, are redeemed annually in Iowa. The legislation would also create new waste volume reduction goals of reducing the waste stream by 50 percent by July 1, 2016 and by 60 percent by July 1, 2021, based on the waste stream existing as of July 1.
Bixby said the new waste volume reduction goal is unrealistic and doesn’t account for the progress already made.
“What you have done by changing the base year on the waste diversion goal to 2011 away from the 1988 base year that we currently use has been to negate every effort that’s already in place so everybody’s now starting at zero and to create a 50 percent goal that nobody in the state will accomplish so that all of us will be forced to ignore it,” Bixby said.
Hal Morton, executive director of the Des Moines County Regional Solid Waste Commission, said a landfill ban is unenforceable, impractical and expensive. He also said a 50 percent reduction in waste is not technically feasible.
”Good intentions don’t make it work,” he said.
This legislation goes in the opposite direction of bottle bill legislation of recent years, which proposed expanding the bill to include juice and water bottles. Iowa's bottle bill has over the years enjoyed bipartisan support, although grocers have lobbied to get the sticky cans out of their stores for sanitary reasons.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, welcomed the discussion about possible repeal of the bottle bill.
“I think people are engaged in a very serious education campaign about the next generation of recycling efforts in this state and what makes the most sense in terms of keeping things out of landfills, doing more recycling,” Gronstal said. “I think it’s a good discussion to be had. Whether they’ve got the right bill remains to be seen but I commend them for introducing the bill.”
Gronstal said the 1978 bottle bill was focused not on recycling, but on litter control and keeping items out of the ditch.
“In today’s world, people are a lot more interested in the recycle side of that equation,” he said. “The question is how can you best promote recycling and less stuff going into the landfill. So I think it’s a good discussion to have. I don’t know that anybody’s got a silver bullet or a magic solution to the challenges of that but I commend people for bringing it up and being willing to have a discussion about it.”
http://www.iowapolitics.com/index.iml?Article=226661
