January 27, 2009
Proposal may expand bottle bill
Water and juice bottles may join redemption program, deposit could go up to 10 cents 
Hartford - A bipartisan group of legislators called Monday for the expansion of the state's bottle and can redemption program, saying a higher deposit and broader application of the recycling incentive could reduce litter and raise millions in state revenue.
Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, and Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, joined environmental advocates and fellow lawmakers in calling for the expansion of the bottle deposit to a broad swath of containers not currently covered by the existing “bottle bill,” including water and juice containers.
They also called for an increase in handling fees paid to retail outlets who must handle bottle returns, and an increase, from 5 cents to 10 cents, in the amount of the state's deposit on recyclables.
Such policies have dramatically increased recycling rates in other states, the legislators said.
Expanding the program to new containers would also increase state revenue, Williams said, one reason the legislators were confident that this was the year water bottles and other exempt containers would finally be brought into the recycling program, despite the objection of beverage distributors and retailers.
Applying a 5-cent deposit to the millions of currently exempt containers could raise an additional $12 million a year for the state in unclaimed deposits, Williams said.
Those figures come from an analysis by the Container Recycling Institute, whose executive director, Betty McLaughin, said that adding a deposit for water and juice containers would bring the total number of affected bottles and cans to more than 2.4 billion in Connecticut.
Assuming current trends remain the same, that could mean as much as $42 million annually in revenue for the state from unclaimed bottle deposits, according to data compiled by the institute from 2006 sales figures.
But lawmakers and environmental advocates also believe that increasing the bottle deposit could bring higher rates of recycling, as has occurred in other states that have increased their deposit amounts.
”Simply put the bottle bill has worked,” McKinney said. “It has worked as an anti-litter measure; it has worked as a recycling measure. States with bottle bills have a higher recycling rate than state's without bottle bills. That's about all the evidence I need.”
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=4ea40e0d-fd3d-46e7-9fd5-220805766122
