I have been watching my Twitter feed, and found out some folks are promoting #NYYY as the progressive vote this November. Of course, my reaction was one of swift outrage!
#NYYY? What is progressive about the New York Yankees?
Then I looked at the thing a little more carefully, and figured out that some Twitter tweeters were selling NO on 1, and YES for 2, 3, and 4 as the progressive positions on the Massachusetts ballot questions.
Except that I am a progressive Boston Red Sox fan, and while I have problems supporting anything that starts with the letters NYY, I also have problems voting for Question 2.
I am also an urban dwelling progressive, with an 895 square foot condo in a building with several single source recycling bins next to the dumpsters in the parking lot. We make good use of the recycling barrels, and we end up throwing out more recycling than trash in the dumpster.
The deposit bottles? Either they end up in the recycling barrel, or they sit around our little kitchen until the next trip to the store. Which store? It depends on the bottle. Beer bottles to the package store. Whole Foods gets the Whole Foods brands, and never the Diet Coke. Can’t take Diet Coke to Trader Joe’s, either. So, we need to sort bottles and cans around multiple recycle bags cluttering the area to the right of the cat food bowl, or we need to toss nickels into the recycling bin.
The original bill was passed in the last century as a solution to the litter problem, with some success. There’s still plenty of litter around the state, much of it has noting to do with bottles or cans. If we were really looking to reduce litter, we would be expanding the bottle bill to include a five cent deposit on Dunkin’ Donuts cups.
The YES and NO forces have been squabbling about the statistics surrounding curbside recycling in the state. What percentage of homes have curbside recycling? I don’t know, but I also know 100% of the homes don’t have curbside trash collection, either. If you live in WInchester, you get to pay $190 for a permit to take your garbage to the transfer station. The lack of trash collection in Winchester doesn’t justify a nickel deposit on banana peels, just as the lack of curbside recycling doesn’t justify a nickel deposit on bottles and cans.
If we want to get juice and water bottles out of the waste stream, the solution is not a nickel deposit on every container. The solution is to expand recycling. This recycling basket is sitting next to the trash barrel at Thorndike Field in Arlington. It is well used, and nobody needs to cart these containers back to the store of origin.
The bottle bill was state of the art when we still had rotary dial phones. Extensive, convenient, and mandatory recycling is a progressive approach to getting bottles out of the trash stream. Let’s start our path toward effective recycling by defeating Question 2, followed by creating an extensive and effective recycling program for all beverage containers.
They’ve been answered repeatedly in other threads on this site. The experience of other states that implemented expanded recycling demonstrate that it will promote more recycling. Litterbugs do not recycle. Etc. Etc.
handling the redeemables. He recycles assiduously. He may vote NO, even though he’s very progressive.
My wife was opposed to the bottle bill until I took her for a short ride on our tandem bike through a section of the Charles River Basin in the Franklin/Norfolk area. In the space of five miles, she counted over 50 discarded water/juice bottles and maybe five beer cans/bottles.
Say what you will, the deposits work. At the very least, those who do litter will now pay an automatic five cent tax.
How does a bottle bill prevent expanded recycling again?
Policy leaders will say that we have the bottle bill so we don’t need to expand recycling. If we get rid of the bottle bill, we need to aggressively expand recycling to compensate.
That makes it sound as though plastics recycling is coterminous with recycling. It is not.
And Speaker DeLeo has refused to bring up the expanded bottle bill for a vote. Do you honestly think he is going to support an expansion of recycling? Has he done that as an alternative? No.
If legislators want to oppose the expansion of recycling in the state, they would do that whether or not the Bottle Bill gets passed.
Using your logic, progressives should’ve voted against ACA so that Washington would be forced to consider single payer. That’s not how Washington works, and it’s not how Beacon Hill works. A defeat of a weak tea version of reform dooms better reform down the road, whereas the success of the weak tea reform builds a foundation for future successes. From the civil rights movement to health care to abortion rights to gay rights to recycling that is how legislative politics works.
Let’s vote against the gas tax indexing since its not a carbon tax, or vote against expanding the minimum wage since it falls short of a living wage or basic income. I also might add so far it’s been two residents of relatively affluent communities with significant recycling programs complaining about the impact this bill somehow adds to their bottom line. Pity the billionaire grocery chain and pity the NPR listener who already recycles. This bill is about getting places like Marlborough and Springfield up to code and building momentum and increasing stakeholders.
Though not the optimal solution, the ACA got us closer to the solution. Universal coverage is an important milestone toward an even better solution. The bottle bill, however, takes us further away from the optimal outcome of getting rid of the deposits and recycling all beverage containers in a unified, common sense system.
Deposits are fine forever, because they reduce litter.
if you mis-define the “optimal outcome” as getting rid of the deposits. However, if the deposit is a public policy tool to reduce litter and encourage positive behavior (recycling), then the deposit/BB works towards those ends.
If only we did x, y would happen. Er go x (repealing the bottle bill) is the only thing standing in the way of utopia on the question of recycling. That is nonsense. Deposit bills encourage recycling for one, by creating a financial incentive to recycle your products and a penuiary fine for littering.
No evidence you have offered thus far seems to indicate that bottle deposits are somehow standing in the way of expanded recycling capability, and you have done nothing to offset the very real likelihood that their defeat at the polls will make future efforts less likely rather than more likely. Like the underpants gnomes, you have a solution in search of a policy rational. One informed by your own gut feelings and reverse NIMBY superiority rather than any concrete data.
Legislatures hate to do anything, particularly ours.
If they have already done something in the recent past, they are much more reluctant than usual to tackle a problem. (We solved that one four years ago. We have other things to ignore.)
If the voters do something (they don’t hate) with a referendum, they are even much more reluctant to do anything. If this ballot question passes, even by a very small margin, we will be confronted with the argument that the voters decided the issue back in 2014, and we are not going to mess with the will of the voters. Thus, a YES vote will exclude this topic from any further debate well into the middle of this century.
Are you now saying that if a defeat of the bottle bill it makes it more likely that the legislature more ‘optimal’ recycling solutions in the future? That seems to be a real stretch.
If we vote to kill casinos they are dead. If we vote to index the gas tax we ensure the gas tax is properly funded rather than avoided like it was for the last 25 years. Using your logic, voting against the gas tax index will lead to a carbon tax and voting against casinos will kill the lottery. I just don’t buy it.
Read what I said in one of the other comments. The bottle bill and expanded recycling that covers bottles are opposite decisions. If the bottle bill extension passes, the legislative response will be that the voters want this solution and that closes the debate.
Voting against the gas tax indexing will be cited as people don’t want an increase in the gas tax. Voting for the indexing will be cited as people are willing to pay more in gas taxes for the public benefit. Voting for casinos has nothing to do with voter perception of the lottery. Voting for the bottle bill extension means people like the bottle bill, and thoughtful changes will be off the table because people voted for the bottle bill.
Yes, you either have to go to the trouble of returning bottles or throw them in the recycling bin. Big deal.
Sad to say, no amount of expansion of existing recycling programs is likely to change the culture of littering that clearly exists. I can’t tell you how many times I have picked up bottles and other trash within spitting distance of a trash can or recycling bin. However, very few of those bottles are redeemable. If we could change the mind set that it is ok to throw your trash anywhere then we could do without a bottle bill entirely. I just don’t see that happening.
Recycling: One bin. When it is full, bring it down to the condo’s recycling barrel. Easy.
Deposit bottles: Four bags. One for Market Basket, one for Trader Joe’s, one for Whole Foods, and one for beer bottles. If you don’t plan on making all your bottle refunds on a weekend, and shop on the way home from work, the bottles accumulate. We don’t exactly have a lot of space to accumulate these bottles.
I would love to forget about nickels, refunds, stores of origin, and just put everything in my recycle bin without the additional cost of the container deposit.
So you’ll have to keep doing what you are doing anyway, no matter how you vote.
Otherwise, all I can think of when I read this is “First World Problems. People should be so lucky.”
Yes, you lose the nickels, but it sounds like you already consider the bottle sorting you do to be onerous enough that perhaps getting the money back isn’t that important.
But today is the 10th anniversary of the tremendous Game 7 victory over the Yankees to cap the comeback.
I, too, tend to put the deposit bottles in the recycle bin and lose the nickels, and I’m not sure someone who’d throw a bottle on the ground will refrain because eager to get that nickel, though it seems empirically to be so. But the 80% recycling rate for containers with deposit vs. 23% for those without deposit is pretty compelling. Anyone have any reason to doubt the statistic?
Since in this post and a similar one two months ago, those subsitituted for any substantial analysis of the problem. So you’re old man doesn’t like returning them to the grocery store and you diligently recycle them, doesn’t mean everybody else lives the same way. Similarly, I don’t see how they are mutually exclusive. It seems like this defeat would send a loud signal to Beacon Hill to avoid any kind of recycling or environmental related legislation.
If the greens can’t defeat a few local grocery chains, it won’t be able to defeat DeLeo and the reflexively anti-spending legislature we have to enact an expanded recycling program statewide. Vote for the bill, if you don’t personally deposit it doesn’t impact you in the slightest. For those retirees and ‘bottle men’ who depend on this for extra income, and for those of us who want to build and expand on environmental policy successes, it actually is a big deal. I have yet to see any compelling evidence that this program won’t work, and certainly no compelling evidence that it’s defeat will somehow help ensure better environmental policy down the road. That latter contention is entirely counter intuitive.
I’d like to know who the bill is bad for.
There are many people who, like me, won’t change their behavior. I throw everything recyclable in my toter, including things I could return for a deposit now. I eat the $.25-.50 each week (someone in my neighborhood usually collects them from me and my neighbors). With a bottle bill expansion, I’ll do the same and eat another $.25-.50 a week. I’m fine with paying that as some sort of “tax” for recycling. I’m fortunate to be lazy.
I know that many are not so fortunate. For those who can’t or won’t afford that behavior, they can return the bottles.
The question becomes – Is there a large population for whom paying the extra deposit on more bottles would be onerous and for whom taking the time to return those bottles and receive the deposit is not practical? If there is a large population of that type, the current deposit regime would also be onerous. I haven’t seen evidence showing a large group of this sort being harmed.
And will the retailers really see any harm? I don’t buy their arguments. There might be some who would cross state lines to shop at places where they could avoid the expanded deposit, but that seems like a stretch and any savings would likely be eaten up by travel costs. The price difference between stores is still what will matter most for cost-conscious buyers. It’s nothing like the savings one could get from going to NH and skipping sales tax on items.
It’s bad for all of us, because this deposit system is an obsolete solution for a problem that had nothing to do with recycling.
RIght now I am stariung at a small stack of Diet Coke cans in my office because the vending machine doesn’t take returns and there is no easy way to recycle them. They are not going to end up as litter, but they stand a significant risk of ending up in the dumpster and the waste stream because the recycling stream is poor. And why should it improve? Those cans are supposed to be redeemed for a nickel, not thrown in the trash.
When I have traveled to Japan, they have an effective recycling program. There isn’t a bottle deposit in the nation, but every trash can has an accompanying recycle bin. It works. We should be going in that direction, instead of imposing the bottle bill extension that will end all chances of rethinking the whole issue.
How is a solution that is better than (more recycling at not very much increased cost) the current system but not as good as the perfect system somehow worse or harmful?
I agree with you that an enhanced recycling regime would be better, and I support that.
Two points on that, though.
1. There is not much traction for such a statewide solution, especially among current legislative leadership.
2. Expanding the bottle bill does not preclude those solutions, just like how having limited deposits did not prevent Cambridge from getting a single-stream program.
Expanding the bottle bill is likely the best step toward moving to overall enhanced recycling because it has a very high likelihood of changing behaviors about recycling.
Not so much here. My office actually has very carefully marked green compost bins with prominent signs indicating you should not put plastic or coffee cups in it, and yet dozens of highly educated white collar workers can’t be bothered to pay any attention. I routinely pick bags of dog poop out of my yard waste bags and recycling bins because one or more people in my neighborhood can’t be made to care that there is a difference between trash and recycling.
If you can find a way to change that mindset, we can talk about other approaches.
Heck, I can’t get people who come in to canvass or phone bank for Democratic candidates at a campaign office to pay attention to the recycle signs posted prominently on and above each receptacle.
I’m a little concerned about the indexing.
Why not just raise the deposit amount and be done with it? We know the index will just make it rise every five years.
Why is that a bad provision? It’s just a mechanism to encourage the positive behavior (recycling). As the value of a nickel declines, people are less willing to return the can or bottle and collect the deposit. So, the policy increases the deposit to keep up with inflation. One issue is that the deposit price is so outdated that it no longer does as effective a job at encouraging the positive behavior. Rather than rely on referenda, or Bob DeLeo, this provision will make it less cumbersome. If the deposit were a buck, there would be no bottles on the street, and everyone would return the returnables themselves instead of some people simply dropping them in recycling bins. Not to suggest that the deposit should be a buck……. The key is how to set the deposit price at a level where it doesn’t discourage the purchase of the product, but does encourage the positive behavior. Indexing helps do this.
n/t
An unnecessary complication is going back to the voters every four years when you want to propose a change, indexing makes it automatic. Clearly even progressive voters apparently have a ton of difficulty understanding why this policy makes sense. So ensuring its permanence and sustainability via indexing makes as much sense as indexing the minimum wage to the cost of living and indexing the gas tax. Again, to the vote no crowd, yours is a vote in search of a rationale. Doubleman has pretty much destroyed all your arguments in a far more concise manner than I have.
I’m not making an argument, I’m stating my concern that indexing presents complications. Let’s not lump in the minimum wage, that is a different discussion. I would support indexing the minimum wage.
But this is a stable system for many years now, and it works. So I would prefer raising it, to reflect its age, and then revisiting it at date X.
NOTHING is automatic in Massachusetts.
jimc, I’m right there with you.
If we had a nimble, productive, progressive legislature I’d agree with you about the inflation. But if we did have that kind of lege, they’d have raised the deposit from five cents to ten cents no later than 2005, when inflation made a 2005 dime worth a 1983 nickel. 2005 came and went, and so did four other legislative sessions. Not so much as a whimper on raising the deposit.
Of course, if we had a nimble, productive, progressive legislature, they’d have expanded the bottle bill to include Snapple bottles and Gatorade bottles and water bottles in 1990, as Maine did. Hell, they’d have also included wine and liquor bottles (fifteen cents), as Maine did.
And, I’d add, if we had a super swell legislature, they’d have set up co-mingling agreements so that like-containers (i.e. soda, beer) could be collected by all locations participating, thereby reducing the delays for sorting and the added transportation costs for customers, merchants, and vendors.
We don’t have that legislature. Given the legislature we have, we’ve got to index the deposit to inflation if we want to be even reasonably sure that the deposit keeps pace with inflation.
…since for reasons passing understanding it seems to cut down on litter. However, I still find the argument about focusing on universalizing curbside and public recycling a much easier one to make. I also have to say, the way the diarist has been treated isn’t exactly scoring points in the persuasion department.
This is a claim that has been consistently unproven and throughout this debate.
…but as pointed out above there is a concern I share that the broader solution won’t be addressed at least as quickly if this is done. I also prefer universalization because it is so much easier and a little cheaper.
If you were to ask me do I prefer the state spend money to implement more redemption or to place a recycling dumpster next to my complex’s trash dumpster I’d say the latter without hesitation.
Another unanswered question by the opponents. The answer-less likely since we let the special interests win and the narrative that recycling imposed costs on them they can’t afford. Voting against this bill let’s the conservatives win. Another Koch backed victory against economic and environmental reason.
…but if it fails, and frankly I predict it will, we should redouble our efforts to do what we should have done in the first place. The idea that this is the option being offered is a reason I’m voting for it, but not a very inspiring one – kind of the ballot question equivalent of the lesser of the evils. I reject that this one is entirely about the special interests. Plenty of us prefer doing it right to expanding an outdated law.
I actually suspect that this is entirely false. The reason is simple: paper.
The value of paper (office, news, cardboard, etc) is positive. That is, unless it’s spoiled. How does it get spoiled? The drippings of Coke and beer cans, and even water. Once that paper is wet, it’s gone from having positive value to negative value.
By removing (more! most!) of the beverage containers from the paper recycling stream, the value of the paper remains high.
Note: I’m claiming degree, not absolute. I’m not claiming that 100% of paper is spoiled now, or that 0% will be spoiled post-2. I am claiming that the degree of spoilage will be reduced, and that means a higher (financial) value of the recycled materials overall.
…which is why I said a little cheaper. I’m not going to complain too loudly about a few cents, just pointing out that unredeemable containers doing include a deposit in the price.
.
Plenty of people chuck deposit cans and bottles on the ground currently. But they don’t last long because someone picks them up. I often see these certain someones with big bags of bottles and cans at my local grocery. These same people would pick up the water bottles, etc. if they could get a nickel each for them. Currently they can’t.
That is the kicker for me in voting yes. It does lead to cleaner public spaces and it gets some change into the pockets of people who really need it.
If they put a nickel deposit on Dunkin’ Donuts cups, I might agree with you. However, deposit or no deposit, there will still be plenty of litter out there.
You’re voting no because you agree but wish it would do more?
As far as I can tell, there is no downside to this bill as far as littering and recycling problems go. #NYYY is right.
One of the main concerns people have is with municipal budgets, and the fact is that passing the bottle bill leads to a reduction in waste. The reduction may not be huge but even a 5% increase in recycling rate would translate to 50 to 100K in savings in many town budgets.
And the experience in other states is that this measure would not increase prices charged at the grocery store significantly. Coca Cola is already charging you $1.50 for a bottle of water, c’mon. They have a huge profit margin and this will reduce their windfall profits a bit, and that is better than the bottles floating around in the middle of the pacific ocean, or slowly decomposing over 400 years…
with someone from Question 2.
After telling her I supported it, I asked her what to say to naysayers. She said there’s a lot more that would be recycled that would otherwise go in the trash. It doesn’t cure litter. It’s not a panacea. It increases recycling and eliminates a lot of litter.
Aside from litter, the most compelling reason for including more bottles is that the difference between the money collected and not redeemed will go to an environmental fund that will finance more improvements in recycling and spending on the environment.
NOTE: If people don’t accept the fact that deposits lead to more recycling, don’t bother arguing. It does. It’s empirically established. Individual preferences are anecdotal and don’t reflect the aggregate phenomena.
It appears that the main focus of the question 2 campaign was on litter but the amount of litter is low in some semi rural places…
it seems a no brainer that if stores and parks and homes stop throwing the recyables into the trash, it saves big $ on landfill and incineration costs. Also reduces pollution from incinerators.
The store owners are still paying for disposing of plastic bottles via trash collection… it is not a huge burden on them to recycle and it might even save some of the stores money!
Currently 2-1/4 cents per bottle or can.
Alongside No on 1. Both sensible, pro-environment and sustainable communities initiatives in my book.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2014/10/21/yes-question-expand-bottle-bill/qSVAFCdiA9U53aQoginblK/story.html