[OKRA] Bottle Bills Introduced

Fri Jan 22 12:27:11 PST 2010

To all concerned about the new Oklahoma Bottle Bill,

The information from Fenton Rood is absolutely correct. The House bill (hb2916) and the Senate bill (sb1896) have been filed as shell bills. The reason for this is to allow lawmakers to view it as a preliminary document with the intention of it being massaged to fit Oklahoma.

I initially wanted to keep it under the radar of the opposition, but they have already come out in force. They have lined up with their lobbyists and have written letters to the coauthors of the bill asking them to not support the legislation. 

I would suggest, if you are passionate about recycling to voice your opinion to your local lawmakers....state, county and city. However, to give the bottle bill the best chance of passing, we need to focus on these key issues.

1) Jobs, jobs, jobs! 

*         This bill is a job saver and creator. Specifically, it saves jobs like those of ours in the glass industry and others using recycled content to reduce energy consumption and costs. 

*         The bill allows for redemption centers. This will create a new industry for entrepreneurs to open businesses and hire people to operate and maintain them.

*         Transportation jobs for trucking recycled materials.

2) No mandates and not a tax!

*         Our bill does not mandate any store owner to have reverse vending machines on their property. Although, grocers should understand if there is a redemption center between two local grocery stores, he will not be able to guarantee the customer will enter his store with the redemption receipt to buy more products.

*         This is a return on investment. The only way a consumer would lose money is if he/she chose not to redeem their bottles and cans. For those who don't return their empty beverage containers, we say "thank you" for helping build the unredeemed deposit fund.

3) A compliment to curbside recycling

*         Bottle bills and curbside recycling are not mutually exclusive; they work best when they are combined. 

*         Curbside recycling only targets residential.

*         Deposit laws target mostly beverage containers consumed away from home.

*         Curbside recycling is not free; municipalities must budget for the extra pick-up, handling and space. Taxpayers foot the bill.

*         Deposit laws put the cost on the producers, not the consumer.

*         Comingled material from curbside and single-stream recycling is much more difficult to be reused by manufacturers. The material has to be sorted and has much higher levels of contamination. You can't unscramble an egg!

*         Bottle bill states produce "pristine" recycled material for optimal reuse.

*         Statistics show (Container Recycling Institute), states having bottle bills have much higher overall recycling rates than other states. It becomes part of the culture.

*         Lessens trash going to landfills.

4) Significant environmental benefits  

*         Reduction in energy use.

*         Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

*         Reduction of virgin material extraction.

*         Litter reduction along roadsides, parks, lakes, rivers, farmer's fields and city areas.

5)    Self sustaining 

*         The unredeemed deposit fund allows for a self-sustaining project. No taxes or public funds! This could be a huge amount of money, especially when the project first gets going, since many people won't redeem their containers. It is up to the state to decide how they want to use it, but there could be many benefits, especially at a time when there are so many budgetary short-falls.

*         We like the idea of charities and/or churches getting involved to be redemption centers. This could raise a significant amount of money for their causes and put people to work.

Please take the time to look over the following websites and become an informed advocate for the Oklahoma Bottle Bill:

http://www.bottlebill.org/

http://www.container-recycling.org/

http://www.gpi.org/

Sign up to be a part of the Bottle Bill Action Network:

http://groups.google.com/group/bban?hl=en

Below are the arguments the opposition is using. Most of what they are trying to say is old, tired, outdated thinking and not substantiated by facts and/or statistics. I think there is an overwhelming argument, supported by data and collected by groups like CRI, GPI and others. Please review the opposition's position, then call your local decision makers and legislators and tell them why a bottle bill makes so much sense.

Why Bottle Bills Don't Make Sense Today

Putting a deposit on beverage containers means establishing a separate, often duplicate

recycling system for a small subset of the waste stream. Beverage containers typically

account for about 4% of waste produced and are among the most recyclable and most

recycled packaging materials. Deposits may have made sense 30 years ago when there

were no recycling programs, but not today.

* Community recycling programs suffer when deposits are in place

because programs lose the revenue from valuable aluminum cans as well as from

PET and HDPE plastic bottles.

* These revenues provide significant funding for recycling programs. A deposit

system siphons off much of this material and the revenue is used instead to cover

the high costs of redemption.

Increasingly, recycling companies are speaking out in opposition to deposits because

of the adverse impact on their businesses.

* Cutting materials out of existing recycling systems makes those systems less

efficient and unnecessarily complicates recycling for consumers. Communities

still must operate with the same recycling staff, equipment, and facilities, but

have less material over which to spread their costs.

* Bottle bills produce unintended environmental consequences.

Recycling should reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but using a deposit system to

recycle reduces or eliminates those benefits.

*A deposit system requires consumers to self-haul empty containers to redemption

centers for refunds. Newer redemption systems (California, Hawaii) rely

exclusively on specialized redemption centers, which mean a special trip for

consumers and incremental fuel consumption and vehicle emissions. Putting a

new fleet of trucks on the roads to collect empty containers from these centers

adds to the problem.

* Contrasting this mode of recovery with existing curbside, dropoff, or commercial

recycling, beverage containers move more efficiently with other recyclables. Since

no new fuel is required, all the greenhouse gas benefits of recycling are realized.

* Redemption systems are costly to operate.

A new system designed to handle only certain materials has to add costs.

Ultimately, consumers bear these costs through higher prices for beverages and

other grocery items.

*Traditional redemption systems (beer and soda only) cost three times more than

curbside recycling to recover a ton of material; the multiple grows when

noncarbonated products are included.

* Centralized redemption systems like California's reduce redemption costs, but eat

up the savings with large subsidies for program administration and other program

dependents.

* Bottle bills offer little benefit compared to alternatives.

By focusing on such a narrow part of the waste stream, deposits offer little

environmental gain, considering their high cost.

* Beverage container recovery rates in states with generally good residential and

commercial recycling exceed 50%, not only for these containers, but for other

materials as well. Deposit states may achieve 60 to 70% rates for beverage

containers (including fraud as discussed below), but some, like Michigan,

have very poor rates for other materials.

* Beverage containers only represent about 7% of litter so the benefits of deposits

are limited in that area as well. In fact states with long-standing anti-litter efforts

are typically cleaner than deposit states because they take a broader view of

the problem.

* Border issues drive up costs and hurt local economies.

A container deposit represents a significant price increase, especially for less

expensive products like soda and water. That value creates unintended

consequences:

* Fraudulent redemption of containers brings into deposit states millions of

foreign containers that were not purchased there originally. Fraud adds expense

to the systems, shifting the cost of managing materials onto the deposit state's

consumers. Fraud cuts into unclaimed deposit revenues that can help defray

system expenses. And fraud inflates redemption rate numbers attributed to

deposit programs.

* The price incentive also drives retail business out of deposit states. Border area

food stores lose 5% of their overall sales based on the impact of 5¢ deposits on

beer and soda alone. This sends jobs and tax revenue out of state.

* Smarter, better ways exist to increase recycling.

Deposits seem to some like the only way to move beverage container rates higher,

but looking at state of the art practices in recycling indicates that there is still much

potential we can tap.

* Rather than ruining our existing system to recycle more bottles and cans, we need

to leverage our investment in that system to update programs and increase

participation.

* Meanwhile, cities from Seattle to Madison, Wisconsin to Portsmouth, New Hampshire

are showing the way with best practices to achieve 50%+ recovery rates for all materials,

using best practices like single-stream curbside collection and pay- as-you-throw incentives

to encourage recycling.

* Add to that the excitement around RecycleBank, a recycling rewards program

that is paying households for their recycling in coupons and discount certificates

for groceries and other goods and services from local merchants. RecycleBank

communities in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, and Massachusetts are

experiencing unprecedented rates of participation and waste diversion as a result.

If you feel this information is helpful, feel free to share it with those who will work for the bottle bill. If you have any questions, or if I can help in anyway, please let me know.

Another valuable resource available to us is our point man, Steve Edwards. Below is his email address. He is working to find common ground with the opposition and to inform and educate legislators about how a bottle bill can benefit our state.

Steve Edwards

edwards-steve at sbcglobal.net

The opposition is formidable, but not insurmountable.

The legislative session begins in February and runs through May. We need to build momentum and stay on task. We need your help!

Remember, it's about Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

Jim Bologna

Site-Energy Manager

Saint-Gobain Containers

Sapulpa, OK

(918)227-5537 Office

(918)691-2192 Cell

-----Original Message-----
From: okrecycles-bounces at recycleok.org [mailto:okrecycles-bounces at recycleok.org] On Behalf Of Rood, Fenton
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 10:20 AM
To: Shields, Susie; OKRA list serv; OSN Sustainability List Serv 
Subject: Re: [OKRA] Bottle Bills Introduced

Do not worry or spend much time studying the current language in the

bills.  These are shells that will be subject to significant change as

negotiations proceed.

-----Original Message-----

From: okrecycles-bounces at recycleok.org

[mailto:okrecycles-bounces at recycleok.org] On Behalf Of Shields, Susie

Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 9:32 AM

To: OKRA list serv; OSN Sustainability List Serv 

Subject: [OKRA] Bottle Bills Introduced

In case you are interested, here is the text of the bottle bills that

have been introduced at the State Capitol.

Bottle bill-House:      http://www.ecapitol.net/ViewText.wcs?HB2916_INT

Bottle bill-Senate:     http://www.ecapitol.net/ViewText.wcs?SB1896_INT

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