May 7, 2011
How about this idea for empty bottles
The first thing that comes to mind when reading the revised Bottle Bill passed by the House on Wednesday: Can’t anyone in the Capitol frame a simple law?
Basically the bill, HB 3145, would include additional types of containers in the requirement that retailers charge a deposit. The additional containers would be those of sports drinks, bottled tea and the like. They would not include those for wine, liquor or milk.
The bill would also increase the deposit from 5 cents to 10 cents, but only if the redemption rate for containers falls below 80 percent for two years in a row.
And in the calculation of the 80 percent, the additional containers added by the bill can’t be counted until Jan. 1, 2021.
In short, the full impact of the bill may not be felt for some.
In 1971, the legislature was not that chicken. If memory serves, the deposit requirement took effect the following year and that was that.
The new bill contains an additional wrinkle. It requires the Liquor Control Commission to authorize one — just one — redemption center in a city outside of Portland, and it sets up special conditions for supermarkets and convenience stores that want to participate in the redemption center program.
One set of conditions applies to stores within a half-mile radius of the redemption center, known as a “convenience zone.” The second set would apply to participating stores between half a mile and three miles from the center.
This is supposed to be a pilot project to see how it works.
Here’s a prediction: Consumers will be confused by the “convenience zones — who knows exactly how far it is from the store to the redemption center? — and wonder what the legislature was thinking.
And considering that at least two redemption centers have been operating in the Portland area already, what’s the point of a pilot program in the first place?
Some people now avoid the whole deposit-and-return scheme. For the sake of convenience, they eat the small deposit expense and place their empties in their household recycling bin. That way, the containers get recycled without anybody having to stand in line and feed bottles and cans into a machine, one by one.
But there’s another alternative, brought on by a growing number, at least in Albany, of transients begging at street corners.
We are advised not to hand them money, and that is good advice. If begging doesn’t work, they might do something else.
They might be induced to comb the city and countryside for empties they could then turn into ready cash.
So instead of putting our empties in the curbside recycling bins and set them out by the curb on trash days for Allied Waste to pick up, how about we put them in a paper sack out on the curb with a sign: “Help yourself.” We could use plastic grocery sacks for this unless the legislature bans them.
If the House-passed container bill clears the Senate and becomes law, more types of containers will become slightly more valuable — and thus useful for this kind of plan to help the homeless.
It would cost householders a negligible amount of money while saving them a lot of time, keep containers out of the trash, return them to the recycling stream, and give the panhandlers something useful to do. (hh)
http://www.democratherald.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_ef9c6f76-7937-11e0-9b9a-001cc4c03286.html
