Great Lakes Green Pages

We recycle.  Everything we can.  I even bring recyclables home from my travels to make sure that they get recycled and don’t end up in the landfill.  I have ranted on and on about restaurants and food vendors like Starbucks and Chipotle that sell beverages in containers and do not recycle, so if I dine at one of these places I have to bring a bottle or plastic cup home to make sure it doesn’t end up in a whole in the ground.  Sometimes, however, I forget.  Or worse, sometimes I am just lazy and do not feel like hauling that glass bottle with me for the next couple of hours while I do my grocery shopping or whatever.  But we do better than many, and some people (even my friends-yes, you know who you are) still do not recycle.  I die a little each time I see them toss a can in the trash or that plastic container not even reused once before it heads to the curb.

That is why I am a big advocate of the bottle deposit law.  What is that?  Well, if you live in a state with a deposit, some or all beverages that come in a container have a deposit attached.  That means that when you buy a soda, you pay an extra nickel for the container.  When the container is empty, it can be returned for the five (or in some states ten) cent deposit to be returned to you.  This is not a new idea.  When I was a kid, we used to go bottle hunting.  We would scour the areas around the parks, pool, or that spot where the older kids used to hang out and drink beer on Friday nights.  We would take our dozen bottles, cash them in, and buy ourselves a treat.  I grew up in Kansas, that had a bottle deposit until sometime in the 80′s.  In most of the states on the west coast, it is still a law.  Just look at your can of Coke and you can see the eleven states that offer deposits.  But why should every state have a bottle deposit?  Because we are lazy (and greedy).

Why do we even have this debate at this stage in the game? It seems natural that we should all be recycling, so we do not need a deposit bill, right? Wrong. While those reading this may be avid “greenies” we often forget that we are still in the minority. The only way to get more recycling to be done is by making it easy, mandatory, or profitable. By adding a 5 cent deposit to every container of soda that we sell in the US, most of us would not feel it a bit. Beverage producers would need little to add to their system, as they have all the tools to implement a program in every state, as they do it already in some. Your case of beer or soda would cost you an extra $1.20. But when you return to the store, you return the cans and get your $1.20 back. In places like Oregon, I saw folks at a more difficult stage of their lives surviving by collecting those nickel containers. Parks are cleaner, roadsides have less litter, and recycling is up. Way up according to the Container Recycling Institute.  According to their numbers, states with mandatory deposits have recycling rates hovering around 60%.  On the other hand, states that do not have deposit laws have recycling  rates that only reach about 24%.  That includes progressive states like Washington that recycle well, but still have no bottle deposits.

So with the stroke of a pen, we could increase recycling rates in all states.  Why do we not do it?  Once again, laziness and greed.  Store owners hate bottle deposits as it does add to their operating expenses.  Does that mean stores in Oregon are less profitable than those in Ohio?  No.  The impact on the bottom line of stores is minimal, as they do not have to pay that deposit refund, it comes from the manufacturer.  With the simple addition of automatic bottle counting machines, the work goes back to the consumer in most cases-and consumers are lazy.  Besides, if we had to rely on store owners to do the right thing on their own, I am sure there would be complaints of food expiration dates and mandatory breaks as eating into their profits.  The real opposition comes from big business lobbying.

The American Beverage Association has gone so far as to produce a report.  But this report has issues for me.  First off, I never rust a report that is produced, commissioned, and reported by itself.  Secondly, I do not support their conclusions.  According to the report, money would be better spent to expand community recycling programs than spent on bottle deposit implementation.  While that may be true, ABA member companies would be forced to invest in bottle deposit programs, while there is no way legislation will be passed that will force bottlers to give money to the communities of the country to expand their recycling efforts.  Their report also states that 73% of Americans have curbside recycling and 83% have access to drop off recycling.  I find those numbers hard to believe, but considering the high population numbers in urban centers it could be true.  That being said, it really is slight of hand.  Even in Cleveland we have access to drop off locations and some access to curbside.  Even I find recycling difficult in this town.  So those who are less motivated or who have less time are even less likely to recycle.  But, were there a bottle deposit in place, even my non recycling friends would be likely to start.  Or at the very least, would be likely to put their cans out for the homeless to pick up and return for cash.

The ABA is a lobbying group that represents its members.  They say,“three decades of data and practical experience have undeniably demonstrated that imposing mandatory deposits on beverage containers is a poor way to increase recycling and address solid waste issues.”  Of course mandatory deposits would force their members to implement deposit programs, so not a huge surprise that their findings fell this way.

The truth of the matter is that we sell 200 BILLION beverage containers in the US every year.  Out of these, 130 billion end up in the landfill or are incinerated.  We know what we are doing, yet are too lazy to do anything about it.  That is why I support a national bottle deposit.  In a time when national corporations are doing just fine, but local recycling programs are struggling, I say that we can let Anheuser Busch and Pepsico pay the bill to take some of our waste out of the waste stream.