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Should Bottle Deposits Become Law?
Emily Clinch
Pennsylvania has had a mandatory recycling law for 14 years-since
1988's Municipal Waste Planning, Recycling, and Waste Reduction Act-requiring
landfills and other waste-to-energy operations to establish easily
accessible drop-off centers for recycling. An additional 10 million
people or more have access to curbside recycling programs. But now
a new act, pushed on by Carbon County Commissioner Tom Gerhard, would
put the responsibility for recycling not on waste-disposal companies
but on manufacturers. "If you're out there doing a job,"
Gerhard explains, "you should be doing your job to clean the
environment up." By adding a five- or 10-cent refundable deposit
to every bottle, Gerhard hopes to convince consumers that returning
a bottle for recycling can be economical as well as eco-friendly.
Gerhard's efforts are being duplicated on the national stage, too.
In July, Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT), head of the Senate Committee
on Environment and Public Works, introduced a measure that would require
the beverage industry to bear the cost of recycling 80% of its containers
within two years of the bill's passage. The national bill, similar
to Gerhard's proposal and many programs already existing in other
states, would institute a refundable deposit on all cans and bottles;
this one 10 cents.
Between 1992 and 1999, there was a 50 percent drop in recycling rates
for cans and bottles. The addition of a national 10-cent deposit would
almost certainly get that rate to rebound completely, according to
Pat Franklin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute.
Nudging the national recycling rate up to 80 percent would lead to
the equivalent saving of 64 million barrels of oil per year. "I've
talked to some people from other states and they tell me it absolutely
does work, it increases the recycling business, it just works,"
says Gerhard.
The evidence certainly points in that direction. In the year 2000,
the ten states that had already instituted deposit programs recycled
more bottles and cans than the remaining 40 states combined. Michigan,
for example, has America's highest rate of recycling-95 percent. It
also has a 10-cent deposit. Looking at Michigan and other states'
successes, Hawaii instituted a bottle deposit in June 2002.
Not everyone is excited about the proposed changes, though. The soft
drink industry claims that deposit programs unjustly penalize it for
individuals' failures to recycle. Further, they argue, returning bottles
and cans is difficult for the elderly, as well as for consumers who
use public transportation. Traditionally strange bedfellows, some
community recycling groups also suggest that a comprehensive recycling
program can have as large an impact as a bottle bill, and that returned
glass and aluminum can take away revenues from those very recycling
programs.
All in all, however, few people doubt that a statewide or nationwide
bottle deposit will help increase recycling.
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