Bottle bill
I have seen some odd criticism directed toward the bottle bill, and I would like to address the silliness a bit. First of all, the effects of this bill would be felt only by those who choose to take part in the initiative; if you continued recycling your containers in single-stream curbside pickups, nothing would change for you. But this bill would allow you to get a refund of 5 cents per container, if you felt like taking empty containers to the supermarket.
Yes, deposit centers are at supermarkets; you can just bring empty containers back to the store every few shopping trips. The bill’s opponents paint it as an inconvenient system that nobody would take advantage of, but in reality, bottle bills simply offers another way to take out your recycling.
Stores would not be increasing prices in response to this legislation. On the contrary, prices would be the same or even decreased. The Department of Environmental Protection released a study in 2011 comparing beverage costs in New England states that have passed bottle bills with those in states without the bill. Beverage prices were the same or higher in non-bottle bill states.
Critics also label the bottle bill as an unnecessary expense to a state in dire economic straits. This is a strange argument, considering that the bill would lay no burden on the state. Under typical container deposit systems, the cost of recycling is borne by producers and consumers of beverage containers — that is, manufacturers and distributors — not by the government or taxpayers.
Additionally, participation in the program is completely optional. At worst, state residents would experience no direct benefit from this bill, but would get to enjoy cleaner roadsides and a greener state with high recycling rates. Hopefully, the bottle bill can be something Terps support out of solidarity and not regard with confusion.
This state uses about 4 billion bottles each year. Of those, less than 1 billion get recycled. The rest of those bottles end up in landfills, incinerators and in our rivers, forests and the Chesapeake Bay. That’s enough bottles to wrap around the Chesapeake Bay 34 times.
That is a lot of bottles that end up harming the natural environment and human health. This state has a very good curbside recycling program to take everyone’s bottles already. But curbside recycling is not available to every resident in the state or in public places. A bottle bill would provide an incentive for people to recycle their bottles. This ensures that the bottles can still be recycled even if recycling is not readily accessible.
Another benefit from a bottle bill is that the materials that are retrieved through recycling are of a much higher quality than from single stream. Glass bottles are sometimes broken in single stream and have to be “downcycled” into items that cannot be recycled again. Studies have shown that 98 percent of colored glass material is recycled as opposed to 40 percent in single-stream systems.
Finally, a bottle bill has an opportunity to create jobs in the recycling industry. In Iowa, the Department of Natural Resources reported 1,200 jobs attributed to the bottle bill. This provides another boost for this state’s economy.
Bottle bills have been proven to work in the 10 states that currently have them. Having one in this state would provide countless benefits, from cleaning up our environment to helping out residents.
Rob Swam is the president of MaryPIRG and an environmental science and technology major, and Kyle Vaughan is a behavioral and social sciences college representative from the SGA and a junior government and politics major. They can both be reached at jettvance@gmail.com.
