September 19, 2007
Banking on returns:
What happens to money from unreturned bottles?
By Kayla Kiley, Cadillac News
 Tanya Berkebile | Cadillac News Jon Miller of Cadillac loads up his vehicle with returnable cans. The Florida native is getting used to the process of returning bottles to the store for MichiganÕs 10-cent deposit. |
When Jon Miller first moved to Cadillac from Florida, he found the process of returning cans “a hassle.”
“I don’t like the fact that I’m required to spend money on it,” said Miller, referring to the extra 10 cents Michigan residents pay for returnable cans. “And returning cans is kind of contradicting to the entire process (of helping the environment) — using the car (to take your cans to the store) burns gas, which is bad for the environment in general.”
Miller also is critical of the placement of bottle return machines in some Cadillac stores.
“I don’t like walking through an entire grocery store with a bag of used bottles and cans, displaying everything I drank for the past month,” he said. “It’s not bad when they’re right at the door and it’s quick and easy, because you don’t look like a hoodlum walking through the grocery store with a bag of bottles.”
Miller, who is used to Florida’s curb-side recycling, said he’s “pretty indifferent” about Michigan’s bottle return laws.
“Yes, it’s a hassle, but it does promote everyone to recycle,” Miller said.
CADILLAC — From pop can drives to searching the trash for bottles, it seems a lot of people bank on Michigan’s 10-cent bottle return since the law went into effect in 1976.
And when you push a bottle through the jaws of the bottle return machine, it feels good to you know you’re getting a few extra dimes to jingle in your pocket. But what happens when you don’t take back your cans? Who gets that money?
According to Terry Stanton, public information officer for Michigan Department of Treasury, “75 percent of the money from non-returned cans goes into a cleanup and redevelopment trust fund administered to the DEQ, while retailers get the other 25 percent.”
Al Blackburn, manager of Cadillac’s Meijer, said the retailers’ share of the money from unreturned cans goes to Meijer corporate offices and is dispersed miscellaneously within the company. Cadillac’s Glen’s Market store director, Mike Goerbig, said he has no knowledge of where the store’s 25 percent of revenue goes, because he does not directly deal with that money in his store. Both Stanton and Robert McCann, spokesperson for Michigan’s Department of Quality were unsure how retailers distributed their share of money.
Blackburn said it’s “expensive” for retailers to buy and maintain returnable can machines, and there is “absolutely no perk” for the store to offer the service.
While the store may not find the bottle return law very profitable, the environment sure does.
Michigan’s “bottle bill” was enacted in an effort to improve recycling within the state, and the 10-cent rate was set to motivate people to return their cans, according to McCann. Today, Michigan has more than a 90 percent success rate of returning cans, which is a higher return number than states with 5-cent deposits, Stanton said.
While the success rate is high, about 10 percent of the cans are left unreturned — and that adds up to lots of cash.
Last year alone, Michigan accumulated $16.3 million in revenue from bottles that weren’t returned. That number is about average, when compared to the amount of money the state and businesses have accumulated annually from unreturned bottles for the past six years, Stanton said.
While DEQ gets money from unreturned bottles to fund programs like water quality and landfill monitoring, DEQ said they would rather see bottle return rates at 100 percent.
“One of our goals is to have the recycling rate as high as possible,” McCann said. “We do get some money from that (unreturned bottles), but we get money from other funds too. It (money from unreturned cans) is not a lot of money in grand scheme of things — but it does help. If we could trade 100 percent recycling for that money, we would. Our goal here is to reduce the waste-stream as much as possible.”
DEQ said they are very focused on making sure bottles and cans are recycled, because if they aren’t, “by and large, they’ll end up in the landfill,” McCann said.
Stores do not have to accept all returnable cans — by law, stores only have to accept the cans they sell. This is seen as an inconvenience for many consumers, which causes many returnable bottles to end up in the trash.
Returnable bottles in landfills are a minority compared to bottles that don’t have a deposit stamp.
With more people drinking bottled water in the past 10 years, water bottles have been making a prominent stand in Michigan’s landfills, which is causing the “bottle bill” to resurface in DEQ’s discussion.
“There’s a discussion whether the ‘deposit bill’ should be expanded to include other (currently) non-returnable items, like bottled water,” said McCann, who noted DEQ is supportive of including more bottles in the deposit program. “We make sure we do a good job with recycling particular containers, but we still need to recycle more.”
According to Stanton, only carbonated beverages were included in Michigan’s “bottle bill,” because the bottles were a main source of litter and “it’s just the way the law was set up back in 1976.”
http://www.cadillacnews.com/articles/2007/09/19/news/news01.txt
