Attention drunks! Here is a piece of politics that actually affects your life:
Oregon was the first state to pass a law creating a deposit on bottles and cans which is then returned to consumers who recycle. Forty years later, the Bottle Bill has led to much improved recycling rates and, of course, the familiar jangling of the neighborhood homeless bottle collector.
Politicians have long pointed to the Bottle Bill as a hallmark success of Oregon’s pioneering politics, but this year the bill is up for a reboot. Portland Representative Ben Cannon and Salem Republican Vicki Berger are co-sponsoring House Bill 3145, which would expand the redeemable containers to all glass and aluminum beverage containers under 1.5 liters beginning in 2018.
There’s a lot of bizarre exceptions to Oregon’s bottle bill, as Rep. Cannon noted this morning during the House debate on the bill when he held up two cans of Rockstar: One, a carbonated energy drink, was worth a nickle. The other, a gross-sounding Rockstar coffee concoction, was not carbonated and therefore not redeemable despite coming in almost exactly the same can. All sports drinks, energy drinks, coffee, tea, and juice would be redeemable under the new law.
The bill is opposed by the state grocery political action group, which says it will hurt sales, comparing the deposit to a sales tax. But it sailed through the House this morning in a 47-12 vote.
The bill has been good for the environment: “More bottles are recycled in the 11 bottle bills state than in the other 39 states combined,” says Cannon. But recycling rates have dropped in recent years, from 90 percent of redeemable bottles to 75 percent, likely because a nickle is worth way less now than it was when the law went into effect in 1971. If bottle recycling rates stay below 80 percent, the new law would mandate that all bottles and cans would then be worth ten cents rather than five. A dime! We’ll be rich!
It’ll definitely be good for the earth, but I mostly wonder what the new bill’s impact will be on can collectors. Since a lot more bottles and cans will be redeemable, I’d think their incomes would go up a bit.
Their incomes?! Are you a Republican?
I don’t really want to pay an extra dime for every beer I buy. I rely on bikes and public transportation, so getting the empties back to the store is an ordeal. I buy largely from small neighborhood stores that don’t take the bottles back, so if I want my deposit money back, I’ve got to take them up to Safeway and then hang around for around 30 minutes while they count them up. I’d rather just recycle them at the curb — seems far more efficient.
Geyser, you should probably work on that whole illiteracy thing.
The increase in deposit only goes up if we have two consecutive years of less than 80% returns. And it goes up a nickel, not a dime.
And go ahead and keep recycling at the curb…someone else will get your deposit, I’m sure. But, seriously, just complain less.
You should work on the unwarranted attacking thing. I understand that it only goes up if recycling rates stay below 80%. What did I say that contradicted that? And I never said it went up by a dime. This is not a big deal or anything, I only said that I don’t want to pay an extra ten cents–extra in the sense that the deposit is an extra cost, which can take considerable time and trouble to recover. The fact of the matter is that getting the bottles counted at my local Safeway is slow and frustrating, and there are often lines of people with lots of cans and bottles.
And no, nobody gets the deposit if I put them at the curb, even if I leave them out there all week as an eyesore. I live on a low-traffic street.
And I don’t need your permission or approval raise concerns about something being inefficient.
The next helpful suggestion will probably be someone telling me to “buy a fucking car, hippy” or something like that. Because driving bottles to supermarkets, where I don’t shop, would be so… eco-friendly, wouldn’t it?
Aren’t stores required by law to take back your refunds?
Fuckin’ neato. The bums on my curb are super stoked about this.
Small stores are allowed to accept a much smaller number of containers per day than the usual limit of 144 and to refuse any kinds they don’t sell (or claim they don’t sell), so I’d have to remember where I bought all the different containers. The store closest to me in my neighborhood says they don’t have room to store deposits and asks people not to bring them in, and they can be quite hard to deal with, but I want to support the small local stores.
I’m not arguing against the bottle bill, just saying there are probably still some kinks that could be worked out. And that it if the deposit does up, it could add to the grocery bills of lower-income carless folks who are too busy trying to working for small paychecks and surviving to deal with the hassle of returning deposits.
Leaving them on a busier curb is an idea. I’d have to carry them a block or two, but I may try that, so that someone could get the deposit who needs it more than I do.
@geyser: I live on a relatively slow street and every Sunday evening the bottle people migrate through my area taking all the glass out of the recycling bins. I’m surprised that the same thing doesn’t happen where you live.
We have a bottle bum in my burb. He’s cool and I give him all my empties. It’s nice to see a guy working a little for it.
i love giving my bottles to bums. it makes me happy. anyone who complains about giving hard-working bums an extra 30 cents for every six-pack they drink is a disgusting capitalist. sorry geyser, but it’s true.
hopefully, this new law means bums will get paid for my wine bottles as well. i’m paying between $10-$30 for a wine bottle, i’m willing to contribute 10 cents of that to my neighborhood bums.