Easton
Opinion
Expand the bottle bill
By Deborah Knight Snyder
Easton - Here’s a sight that drives passionate recyclers out of our minds: trash barrels chock full of plastic water bottles.
Fellow fervent recyclers, please join me in the primal scream at the mere vision of this scene: Arrrrggh! Why isn’t all that plastic being recycled?
Trash barrels in the school cafeterias, at the playing fields and in indoor sports venues are overflowing with plastic bottles. It takes all my willpower not to reach in there and start pulling them out so that they can be recycled properly. The alternative, of course, is that the bottles will sit in landfills for the next century or so.
Though the reduce-reuse-recycle motto has been widely promulgated over the past several years, it apparently hasn’t done the trick.
Therefore, it was with great joy that I read of legislation introduced to Massachusetts lawmakers earlier this year which would expand the state’s bottle bill to include water and other non-carbonated drinks, such as Gatorade, fruit juices, and the like.
This is an idea whose time has definitely come. When money gets involved, people get motivated.
The state’s existing bottle law is 25 years old and has been working wonderfully all this time. It simply mandates that buyers of soda, beer, and other carbonated beverages pay five cents extra per can or bottle upon purchase. Consumers can then return the bottles and cans and get their deposits back.
It has actually never made sense to me why cans and bottles containing non-carbonated drinks are exempt from the existing law. Anyone who has spent time separating empty Diet Coke cans into one bag while putting identical lemonade cans into the regular recycling bin has probably wondered how on earth this particular exemption was allowed to happen in the first place. It’s illogical to require a deposit on some cans but not on others based on their contents. It’s a gap that clearly needs to be closed, because there are non-recyclers who are throwing those lemonade cans in the trash.
With the proliferation of bottled water, the situation has become even more dire. Water and other non-carbonated drinks are estimated to account for one-third of all beverages sold in Massachusetts. Moreover, people usually consume these drinks on the go, and, without a deposit, there’s no incentive, other than a general respect for the environment, to dispose of them properly. Putting a deposit on those beverage containers at point of purchase would provide that incentive.
For those environmentally asleep people who still insist on throwing the redeemable bottle or can away, there is someone else willing to come along and take it to the redemption center to get the money. Whichever way, the bottles and cans stay out of the landfills. That’s the goal.
Take a walk along a well-traveled street, and it’s rare that you will see a five-cent returnable along the side of the road. However, you will see plenty of non-returnable bottles and cans, which are estimated to comprise 40 to 50 percent of all litter.
Take a look in the aforementioned trash barrels, filled with plastic water bottles, and it’s equally rare that you’ll see a five-cent returnable can.
The absence of bottles and cans on the roadways and in public trash barrels is obviously directed related to their cash value.
I’m not sure about the current status of the expanded bottle bill legislation. A google search suggested that it might have been tabled in the legislature. I truly hope that’s not the case. Here’s hoping that a progressive lawmaker will bring the issue back to the forefront.
If we’re serious about preserving the environment, this seems like a fairly obvious and easy place to start. Go green.
Deborah Knight Snyder lives in Mansfield with her husband and three sons. She is a longtime correspondent for the Mansfield News. She can be reached at [email protected]
