April 20, 2007
Guest column:
Bottle Bill was formed on ethical choice
By RUSSELL SADLER
When former Oregon Gov. Tom McCall was urging the Legislature to pass State Rep. Paul Hanneman's Bottle Bill in 1971, McCall vowed to "put a price on the head of every beverage can and bottle" sold in the state.
Hanneman, a fishing guide from Cloverdale, wanted to control the litter - pop tops, plastic rings that hold six packs together and the bottles and cans - that was showing up in fish and along Oregon's roadsides and beaches.
McCall had a larger goal. McCall wanted to make the beverage industry, grocery stores and their consumers financially responsible for the streams of litter they were generating. For decades, the beverage industry took responsibility for their glass bottles. They were too valuable to throw away. Consumers all over the country were urged to bring the bottles back to the grocery store in exchange for reclaiming a deposit. Then they were returned to the bottlers on the same trucks that brought the deliveries, washed and reused.
In the 1960s, the national beverage industry abandoned the deposit system as inefficient and too costly - to them, anyway. They switched to cans and unreturnable throwaway bottles. And throw them away Americans did. That created the litter problem that disturbed Rep. Hanneman.
Economists have a name for this process. They call it "externalizing costs" - that is, make someone else pay part of the cost of selling and consuming beverages or any other commercial activity. In this case the "someone else" was the taxpayer who paid the price of cleaning up litter.
In 1971, McCall and his staff were smart enough to realize that although the beverage industry had abandoned the deposit system it was still ingrained in Oregonians' habits. Oregon's much-discussed and much-studied Bottle Bill simply mandated the return of the deposit system in Oregon. It has worked well for most of the 36 years it's been in effect. Oregonians rose to McCall's challenge and returned the vast majority of their bottles and cans and claimed their deposit. Unreclaimed deposits are held by the beverage distributors.
In recent years, however, the rate of return has fallen for several reasons. The nickel deposit is no longer the incentive to return beverage containers that it was 36 years ago. If the deposit had been indexed to inflation it would be a quarter now.
Most newcomers to the state no longer have the return ethic. They have adopted the throwaway ethic.
Federal laws governing landfills and recycling encourage consumers to just toss beverage containers in the commingled recycling bin. The beverage industry has successfully fought deposits on non-carbonated beverages that became a significant part of the market in the last three decades.
As a result of these developments, return and recycling of beverage containers is declining and their presence in the litter stream is rising again.
Although the food processing industry's throwaway packaging remains a growing, multidimensional litter problem, there is evidence that a deposit on a few very visible items - nonalcoholic beverages and beer - effectively encourages more recycling and helps discourage littering. For example, Oregon, even with a nickel deposit, recycles a higher percentage of beverage containers than the state of Washington with no deposit.
So what should the Legislature do?
• Impose deposits on noncarbonated beverages that have become a significant part of the beverage market - and the litter problem - over the last three decades.
• Mediate the dispute among the bottlers, distributors and grocers over who gets how much of the "float" - the unclaimed deposit money. Most of the unclaimed deposit money winds up in the pockets of the distributors, but it is the grocers who have the most substantial costs handling returnable bottles. Perhaps a larger split that includes government agencies and private organizations that pick up litter might resolve the issue and create an incentive to accept a dime deposit that would raise the value of returnable containers and encourage more returns. The distributors have no incentive to reform the system because, as returns decline, they make more money. That's the wrong incentive.
• Adopt the clear principle that neither the beverage industry nor its consumers should be allowed to externalize their costs by dumping them on the taxpaying public in the form of more litter. This was Tom McCall's bedrock principle behind the Bottle Bill.
Oregon legislators need to remember that this is the rationale behind regulating beverage bottles in the first place. It's an ethical principle we all learned in kindergarten: Leaving a place as well off as you found it is your responsibility.
Russell Sadler is a contributing writer for blueoregon.com and other publications around the West, including High Country News' Writers on the Range. He has covered Oregon politics for 35 years.
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