Bottle Bill under Assault - Talking Points  4/17/06

Everyone:

The opposition to the bottle bill is mounting fast. The grocery lobby in particular is pulling out all the stops. They are passing out flyers in their stores, making announcements over their loudspeaker systems in the stores, and getting their employees to contact legislators. While these barrages of canned emails usually are not effective, we are being told by legislators that they are having an impact. So, we need to redouble our efforts to counter their negative messages. Since they are sending messages to the entire general assembly (not just their own reps. and senators) we will need to do the same thing. Please doesn't delay, and please forward this message to your groups and other contacts. You can use some of the talking points below to help you draft your message. It doesn't need to be long, just sincere. We can win this, but they are gaining on us, so please help.

SB 1289 adds non-carbonated beverages to the bottle bill, and raises the handling fee paid to grocers and redemption centers for processing empties. The latest version of the bill that the Finance Committee approved last week limits the size of the new containers covered to 20 ounces or less (focusing on the away-from-home market), allows manufacturers to take a tax credit if they redeem more empties than they sell, and removed the language that specified that schools can become redemption centers if they want to. (It wasn't necessary language, as they can already do so under existing statutes.)

Thanks, Betty McLaughlin and Jessie Stratton The Better Bottle Bill Coalition

The Better Bottle Bill Coalition

CT Audubon Society - Sierra Club/CT Chapter - the Teamsters Union - CT Redemption Centers Association - CT Citizen Action Group - Clean Water Action - Peoples Action for Clean Energy - League of Women Voters of Connecticut - Connecticut Fund for the Environment - Connecticut Forest and Park Association - Environment Connecticut (formerly ConnPIRG) - Greenwich Conservation Commission - Milford Environmental Concerns Coalition - CT Coalition for Environmental Justice - The Green Team/Farmington - Environmental Council of Stamford - Common Ground High School (New Haven)  - the Grassroots Coalition - New Haven Ecology project - LWV of Litchfield County - Litchfield Garden Club

The Plain Truth About Deposit-Redemption Recycling

Connecticut has had a bottle bill a five cent deposit on carbonated beverage containers - for 27 years. Curbside recycling, although not available in every town, has been around for 15 years. Actual data can be used to compare the success rates of both of these programs. The best recycling towns in CT have yet to reach 30% recycling rate. The redemption recycling rate is between 66-70% - more than double!

Curbside recycling is needed for items consumed at home like mayonnaise jars and peanut butter jars that are emptied infrequently. Curbside recycling doesn't capture beverage containers that are usually consumed away from home, where there are no blue bins. No one carries their empty containers home to recycle.

Redemption recycling is user-funded privately. Curbside is funded by taxpayers. Yes, all consumers are tax payers, but not all taxpayers are consumers of these particular products. That's why a user fee for these abundant containers is fairer.

The deposit system was and still it the best way to control litter on streets, beaches or in our parks. Most people return their containers 66-70%, remember? And those containers that are discarded or littered are usually picked up by others for the redemption value. This unofficial litter patrol saves the towns more tax dollars by saving the costs to clean up all that litter and dispose of it. Redemption recycling is fuel efficient and less polluting. Most people return their empties when they are going to the store anyway, combining trips. Curbside recycling requires a special trip using diesel powered trucks. Redemption recycling with reverse vending machines (RVMs) shreds or crushes material into small pieces. Significantly more material is transported to processing facilities per trip when containers are reduced to shreds. Think how much more plastic can be moved in the same truckload when the bottles are shredded instead of whole with whole bottles, the truck is filled with mostly air! With the high cost of fuel is it unconscionable to waste fuel and money this way. More trips to move the same amount of material means more air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Recycling businesses that buy and use recycled materials to manufacture new products much prefer materials collected in bottle bill states. Material processed using RVMs has a higher value because it is less contaminated than recyclables that are mingled together at the curb.

Grocery stores complain that their customers don't clean containers before returning them. In all the grocery stores in ten bottle bill states in twenty-five years, there has never been one health code violation reported.

Municipalities favor the bottle bill, and support expanding it to include non-carbonated beverages. Curbside recycling costs towns precious tax dollars to collect recyclables, and waste management competes with other pressing town needs like roads, schools, police, services for seniors, and more. Municipalities have never complained about losing recyclable material revenue because collection costs outweigh the gains.

None of the money involved in the bottle bill goes to the state as a tax. Consumers get their deposits back when they return their containers. The distributor keeps the unclaimed deposits (about $23 million per year, at last calculation in 2003; it's probably higher now). Redemption outlets, including grocery stores, are paid a fee by distributors to collect the containers.

Worries about fraud redemption across state lines are unfounded. Rhode Island has no deposit on beverage containers, and there has never been any evidence that fraud redemption is occurring in Connecticut. Retailers and distributors can prove what they buy and sell, and how much they redeem because they have actual records. Yet in all the years we have had public hearings on this matter, they have never provided any written documentation or actual proof of redemption fraud. This new version of the bottle bill allows manufacturers who over-redeem to take a state tax credit equal to the amount of the over-redemption.

Environmentalists, towns, the Teamsters, recycling business people all favor expanding the bottle bill. Only the grocery stores and distributors don't want it. They would rather keep the cost with the general taxpayer than absorb it as part of the true cost of their product. That thinking is the antithesis of "producer responsibility. The Bottle Bill is Pro-Environment, Pro-Resource Conservation, Pro-Towns, Pro-Jobs, Pro-Taxpayer, Pro-Energy savings and Anti-waste, Anti-litter, Anti-government spending.

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