April 4, 2007
Opinion
State's bottle bill is long overdue for an update
Raise deposit to 10 cents; require it for water bottles
Oregonians must act soon to keep plastic bottles from clogging our landfills and despoiling our beaches and parks.
Ideally, legislators would slap a deposit on beverage containers of all kinds -- iced tea, wine, fruit juice, energy drinks, coffee beverages, you name it. They would make a bold move to catch up with all the plastic, glass and aluminum missed by Oregon's 36-year-old bottle bill.
But this isn't the ideal world. Figuring out where and how to recycle all that stuff takes more time than it should. The discussions can be contentious and the answers difficult, given that many grocers are sick of handling sticky bottles and cans. Who can blame them?
But at least the 2007 Legislature can tackle one of the most widespread nuisances: Plastic water bottles.
Add water bottles to the list of containers that require a deposit. Then commit to developing a system for recycling everything else.
Anyone who thinks this isn't a big deal should just do the math. Thirty-three percent of plastic water bottles were recycled in Oregon in 2005, according to the Department of Environmental Quality. The rest -- nearly 126 million bottles -- wound up in the trash.
That's up from 77 million bottles in 2002 and 47 million in 2000.
Oregonians are a thirsty bunch. We are addicted to the convenience of bottled water at the gym, at meetings and at sports events. We should at least take time to find a recycling bin for the empties. Places that sell bottled water should provide one.
If we had to pay a deposit for water bottles at the grocery-store checkout, as we do with beer and soda containers, thrifty Oregonians would see the light. Nearly 80 percent of containers covered by the bottle bill got recycled in 2005, according to the DEQ.
That's at a measly nickel per can or bottle, the deposit set when the original bottle bill passed in 1971.
If legislators had environmental guts, they'd raise the deposit to a dime. Folks would think twice before tossing a drink container in the trash or alongside the road. Those plastic water bottles wouldn't overwhelm crews at the twice-yearly beach cleanups.
Doing that, and expanding the bottle bill to include water bottles, would be a great start toward getting this problem under control.
Then legislators, grocers, soft-drink distributors and environmental advocates could get to work on the more difficult assignment: setting up some system for recycling plastic, glass and aluminum drink containers of every shape and description.
Oregon's bottle bill has gone nearly four decades without a tuneup. It's high time to make it better.
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