What if you could reduce the litter in our parks, along our
beaches, roads and highways and extend the useful life of landfills, while at the same time providing jobs, helping the poor
and supporting non-profit organizations?
Sound too good
to be true?
Let’s look at the benefits of the humble, frequently forgotten deposit bottle.
Roadside
litter is reduced by anywhere from 30 to 64 percent in the states with beverage container legislation, studies show.
Container
legislation is often called “bottle bills,” after the Oregon Bottle Bill, the first U.S. container deposit legislation
passed in 1971.
A mish-mash of state, county and local rules determine what a bottle is worth and how it’s
redeemed.
The deposit or “cash return value” of a bottle -– which usually covers glass,
metal and plastic –- can range from 5 to 45 cents.
While Oregon and California pioneered such laws, Washington
state doesn’t even have a bottle bill on its legislative horizon. Here's the national picture.
One thing all bottle bills have in common: You, the consumer, pay the deposit when
buying your beverage. Which means that getting your money back —or not --is up to you.
Bottle deposits provide enough
economic incentive for some people to pick them up.
Deposits from containers discarded along roadsides, parks, picnic grounds,
lakes and streams help fund community non-profit organizations as well as helping some low income or homeless people.
By
combining deposits with convenient redemption sites, bottle bill states reach recycling rates from 65 percent to over 90 percent.
Without
deposits, recycling rates average 35 percent for aluminum cans, 14 percent for plastic bottles, and 12 percent for glass bottles.
Bottle
bills also offer impressive community payoffs: Less litter, reduced cleanup costs to cities and counties, less stuff
hauled to our out of state landfill.
Recycling and redemptions centers also provide jobs.
Bottle bills even reduce the
chances of kids getting cut by encounters with broken glass.
Our planet benefits, too.
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It takes far less energy, water and raw materials to re-use a bottle or recycle a can than to dig
up raw materials and process them into a new container every time someone wants a drink. A
beer bottle can be reused between 15 to 20 times, according to one study.
Yet in 2006, some 17 million
barrels of oil — enough to run 1 million cars for a year — went into making plastic water bottles, the
Pacific Institute calculated.
Recognizing this impact, U.S. Rep. Edward Markey from Massachusetts
"recycled" his 2007 Bottle Recycling Climate Protection Act this spring. H.R.2046 has been referred to
House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Countries around the world are recognizing the impact of container
recycling on Earth’s climate.
Across
the Strait, British Columbia uses authorized bottle return sites.
"Just by recycling, last year, BC residents
saved enough energy to power 41,000 homes, took the equivalent of 27,000 cars off BC roads, and reduced about 127,000 tons
of carbon dioxide equivalent from being released into our atmosphere," said Neil Hastie, speaking for Bill's Bottle Depot.
Now
there’s another way to boost recycling: Meet the Reverse Vending Machine.
Instead of selling
you something, this one takes stuff back -– while paying you cash. One of the top five “Coolest Vending
Machines of 2009,” it makes it easy to recycle plastic, aluminum and glass drink container once they're emptied.
(http://tinyurl.com/c44z5c)
Purchasing a drink from one vending machine then getting cash back from another
offers retailers a marketing bonus while supporting other recycling efforts.
Next time you see
the label on that drink you’re holding, consider what those pennies could do for your community, your state
– and Planet Earth.
Bottle deposits provide enough economic incentive for some
people to pick them up.
Deposits from containers discarded along roadsides, parks, picnic grounds,
lakes and streams help fund community non-profit organizations as well as helping some low income or homeless people.
By
combining deposits with convenient redemption sites, bottle bill states reach recycling rates from 65 percent to
over 90 percent.
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|
Without deposits, recycling rates average 35 percent
for aluminum cans, 14 percent for plastic bottles, and 12 percent for glass bottles. Bottle bills also offer impressive community payoffs: Less litter, reduced
cleanup costs to cities and counties, less stuff hauled to our out of state landfill.
Recycling and redemptions centers
also provide jobs.
Bottle bills even reduce the chances of kids getting cut by encounters with broken glass.
Our
planet benefits, too.
It takes far less energy, water and raw materials to re-use a bottle or recycle
a can than to dig up raw materials and process them into a new container every time someone wants a drink.
A beer bottle
can be reused between 15 to 20 times, according to one study.
Yet in 2006, some 17 million barrels of oil —
enough to run 1 million cars for a year — went into making plastic water bottles, the Pacific Institute calculated.
Recognizing
this impact, U.S. Rep. Edward Markey from Massachusetts "recycled" his 2007 Bottle Recycling Climate Protection
Act this spring. H.R.2046 has been referred to House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Countries around the world
are recognizing the impact of container recycling on Earth’s climate.
Across the Strait,
British Columbia uses authorized bottle return sites.
"Just by recycling, last year, BC residents saved
enough energy to power 41,000 homes, took the equivalent of 27,000 cars off BC roads, and reduced about 127,000 tons of carbon
dioxide equivalent from being released into our atmosphere," said Neil Hastie, speaking for Bill's Bottle Depot.
Now
there’s another way to boost recycling: Meet the Reverse Vending Machine.
Instead of selling you something,
this one takes stuff back -– while paying you cash. One of the top five “Coolest Vending Machines of 2009,”
it makes it easy to recycle plastic, aluminum and glass drink container once they're emptied. (http://tinyurl.com/c44z5c)
Purchasing
a drink from one vending machine then getting cash back from another offers retailers a marketing bonus while supporting other
recycling efforts.
Next time you see the label on that drink you’re holding, consider what those pennies could
do for your community, your state – and Planet Earth.
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