Editorial

A bottle bill for the times

The history of efforts to update Oregon's pioneering bottle-return law
is littered with failure, but lawmakers appear to have found a path

When it passed its bottle bill 40 years ago, Oregon was a pioneer. But now it is a codger, grumping about all those newfangled drinks and complaining that a nickel just doesn't buy what it used to.

Truth is, the times long ago left the bottle bill behind. Sports drinks, teas, coffee, juices and other new beverages flooded into stores, but none is covered by the bottle-return law. Lawmakers voted in 2007 to add water bottles to the list of containers subject to the deposit, but even that was a hard-fought change.

The politics around the bottle bill are fierce, with grocers, bottlers and distributors, recyclers, environmental and anti-litter groups all bringing their own perspectives and priorities to the debate. But there's reason to hope that this session bottle-bill reform won't be pitched out the window of the Legislature.

Reps. Vicki Berger, R-Salem, and Ben Cannon, D-Portland, have introduced a new bottle bill that would expand the containers covered, encourage the development of "redemption centers" and possibly increase the nickel deposit to a dime. The bill is still being tinkered with, but it looks to us like the bottle-bill reform that Oregon has needed for many years.

Instead of writing a long list of drinks into the law, it is likely to just include all drink containers of less than two liters, with a handful of exceptions for liquor, wine and milk. That makes sense; time has demonstrated that bottle laws can't keep pace with changes in consumer tastes.

The draft bill also envisions a series of trial bottle redemption centers across many of Oregon's urban areas. Until recently, Oregon has never fully confronted a core weakness in the original design of the law, which required grocers of all sizes to handle the sticky, messy collection of bottles and cans but gave them no financial help or incentive to do so. That's why the grocery lobby has fought every attempt to modernize the bottle bill by covering more containers.

Two pilot redemption centers, one in Wood Village and one in Oregon City, have been successes. Consumers seem to like the better service and equipment and willingness to take larger numbers of containers.

Berger and Cannon deserve credit for their persistence. They've offered to make the increase in the deposit from a nickel to a dime contingent on the success of the redemption centers. The higher deposit would only kick in if bottle return rates dropped below 80 percent. Recycling advocates are pushing for an increase to a dime regardless of return rates.

Yes, other states with a dime deposit have higher returns than Oregon. Moreover, considering inflation, a dime still is far below the effective incentive of a nickel in 1971, when the original law was passed.

However, this is the best chance in four decades to bring the Oregon bottle bill into the 21st century. It would be a shame to see this fragile consensus break apart, and the opportunity to update the bottle bill left once again in the political ditch.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/04/a_bottle_bill_for_the_times.html