As we all know, the state is facing serious budget challenges amid an unprecedented nationwide recession. While reflecting some tough choices, the Fiscal Year 2010 budget Governor Patrick filed today with the Legislature still holds some good news, including a proposal to expand the bottle bill. As Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP), with responsibility for helping municipalities reduce the solid waste they dispose of in landfills by increased recycling, I couldn’t be more thrilled.
By extending a nickel deposit to water, juice, energy drink, and sport drink bottles, we will reduce litter, expand recycling programs, and generate revenue for water rate relief, as well as a little bit of revenue for the state budget. And, the increased recycling of these materials will help sustain and create jobs in Massachusetts through increased collection, processing and remanufacturing of these valuable materials (aluminum, plastic, glass).
This has been a long time coming. The Massachusetts bottle bill was enacted in 1982, imposing a redeemable 5-cent deposit on cans and bottles of beer and soda. Back then, no one could have guessed the proliferation of bottled water and other non-carbonated drinks that we now have on our shelves – and whose empties now litter our roadways and parks.
From 2000 to 2005, containers of carbonated beverages increased just 5 percent, while those of non-carbonated drinks rose 95 percent. And in terms of recycling, a nickel makes a difference: 75 percent of deposit bottles get recycled, while only an estimated 35 percent of non-deposit containers do.
It’s time we brought our deposit law up to date, treating all the bottles that look the same (what’s the difference between a Coke bottle and a Dasani bottle other than the label?) the same way, and making sure they all get disposed of responsibly – reducing litter, reducing wasted resources, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
And the expanded bottle bill will help generate $20 million a year, including $5 million for grants to municipalities to increase residential recycling, expand recycling in schools and public spaces, and provide technical assistance to reduce municipal solid waste management costs. Of the rest, $10 million would go to MWRA ratepayer relief, and $5 million to the General Fund.
To learn more about the proposal click here.
Why not increase the existing deposit to $0.10 while we are at it: that’s about the value of $0.05 in 1982.
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p>Thanks for the post.
This is perhaps a good example of a progressive tax or fee; I personally can’t be bothered to store and haul my empty bottles to the grocery store, I don’t think it’s worth my effort. I put them in the recycling bin. So I guess I’m voluntarily paying this tax/fee. Others who may have less room in their budgets can take the time to do this and avoid the tax.
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p>This might also have the added effect of weaning us off bottled water. Yes, it’s convenient, but when you think about it bottled water is such a waste, tap water is perfectly fine, and I have to believe that sucking so much water out of the bowels of Maine isn’t good long-term.
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p>Now that a 35-bottle case from Costco is going to cost $1.75 more, something like a 30% increase, maybe I’ll think twice and just fill a sports bottle from the tap or buy a Brita.
What do you think about a $0.25 deposit on bottles of wine or liquor? Given that the contents are far more expensive than a can of Pepsi, a larger deposit makes sense. Given that liquor stores are already processing beer cans, they’ve got the infrastructure to handle this.
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p>One more advantage to the expanded bottle bill: it will save DPW budget for cities and towns. After all, they’ll avoid the $75-$150/ton it currently costs them to collect and process commingled bottles of water, tea, etc. In my town, it costs the town approximately $7.60/yr/household to process commingled recyclable containers. Given that we’re an urban Town, there aren’t many deposit cans in the stream (scavengers). If the amount of commingled gets halved due to the expanded bottle bill, my Town will save $50,000 per year on our DPW budget. That doesn’t include the added savings because the DPW will be able to service the litter barrels slightly less often because fewer tea/water bottles will be there taking up space.
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p>Expanding the Bottle Bill will help ease a little bit of stress on DPW budgets state wide. That’s a good thing.
To a point. But how soon until all of the money goes into the General Fund? It happens all the time.
Looks to me that the monies already go to the General Fund.
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p>The $5.0 million in Community grants and $10.0 to ratepayer relief aren’t so out of line from prior years, and it’s not as if the bottle deposit escheated are designated to a non-discretionary trust fund for environmental use only.
our town moved last year (Duxbury) to single stream recycling AND the dreaded “pay as you throw” method for trash collection. Single stream has been great as you pretty much put all of your recycling in one bin, while the $1.25 per trash bag definitely encourages one to cut down as much as possible on throwing away recyclables.
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p>If we expand now the bottle bill to include everything, now we are looking at another trip to drop off additional deposited items that we are already recycling (and also introducing yet another middleman into the equation, namely retail stores who have to take this stuff back).
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p>The proposed new items now go straight to recycling already. Seems to me not to so much a move that’s “good for the environment” as a way to collect hidden taxes/fees from those of us who don’t think it’s worth our time to cash these items in. Please be honest on the motivation here.
it’s unlikely to drive increased recycling from households, you’re absolutely right.
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p>But, it does decrease the number of bottles which end up in town waste and recycle barrels, which lowers costs for the town.
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p>It also reduces Duxbury’s DPW costs to collect and recycle the commingled — in my Town by about $5/household/year. That’s money in your Town budget.
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p>It also reduces the amount of litter you’ll find in parks, along roads, etc. For a variety of reasons, the frequency of bottles roadside is higher for non-deposit than for deposit bottles.
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p>So it’s true, with PAYT you already have a great financial incentive to recycle. Still, Duxbury will net other benefits too.
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p>On a side note, how do you like PAYT? Let me know here or drop me a line. I’m very curious.
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p>I tend to notice beer cans and cardboard packaging on the roads, not Poland Spring bottles myself.
There’s nothing hidden about this tax/fee; it’s stated quite clearly on the bottle.
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p>If you choose not to redeem, that’s your problem. Cost vs. benefit and all that.
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p>And placing a cleanup value on stuff like water bottles will sure help cleanup after public events.
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p>The fact that it will create some additional revenue is just one of many benefits. Call it a lazy tax.
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p>Count me in.
Part of the MA laws on recycling say that no only do they “encourage” recycling but if you are throwing “recyclable” paper in the trash you are violating state law. “Off with their heads…”
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p>I have another legal question, maybe Mike (Deluxebury) knows the answer… Is it legal for a town to collect money for trash (PAYT) which totals above and beyond what the costs of trash removal are thereby generating revenue for the town coffers?
Of course these swells down by the Bay originally tried to sell PAYT as a “cost savings” because the dump sticker cost went from $118 to $25, neglecting the cost of the blue bags ($1 for a kitchen bag, $1.50 for a regular sized bag). Great letters to the editor in the Duxbury Clipper about such a deal; of course these were written by folks who were single and ran over their garbage a few times with the Volvo/Prius before putting in the bag. Anyone with kids knew that it was going to cost you more, recycling or no. Initially thought it might encourage that new holiday “take your trash to work” day…
The city/town can not “profit” on trash services.
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p>Now, they can charge for lots of things, not just the tipping [dump] fees and recycling costs, but also collection, enforcement, maintenance, administrative overhead, etc.
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p>To give you a sense of costs, my Town pays $82/ton for trash. That’s roughly $1.02 per 30 gallon bag. That’s just tipping fees though — we’ve got to collect it, and we’ve got to do all the recycling. For strictly trash, it would cost roughly $150/year plus $1.40 a bag to cover costs. The reason it goes from $1.02 to $1.40 is the bag cost itself (roughly $0.26), administrative fees, and a little cross-subsidization of recycling so that the bag fee doesn’t change every single year. Again, that’s in addition to the $150/hh/yr, which would cover all the recycling, administrative overhead, and the cost of physically driving to each person’s home once a week to collect the trash.
We have a fixed charge of $500K from the trash collector and then a $69/ton tipping fee. We are trying to estimate the pounds/trash bag and the bags/house and it’s looking like a $125 flat HH fee (minus the opt-outs and low income pass) and $2/bag and $1/small bag ($.23/bag cost). I am hoping this will encourage recycling but the state says not to expect much of an increase. Pisses me off since 80% of my house trash is recycling (even with 5 kids – 2 away at college) but the town only does 90% trash and 10% recycling. My wife is on the recycling committee and has only s started the outreach programs for the schools and homes.
your bag fee seems high. The danger with a bag fee that doesn’t reflect the actual costs per unit is that if your estimates are wrong, you might be in the red big time.
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p>$69 tipping comes out to just under $1/bag in tipping fees. Throw in the $.23 and you’re looking at like $1.25 in marginal cost.
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p>The problem with going for $2 is if the program is successful and people throw out less, you could be way short. Instead, I encourage the committee to play with reducing the bag fee and increasing the HH fee.
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p>As for results, everything I’ve read shows that you’ll get a 25% reduction in trash. About a third of that will end up in recycling; the rest just magically disappears [people don’t take stuff home from their weekend house, from work, don’t take the freebie crab handed out anywhere, etc]
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p>And 80% — is that by weight or volume. I’d believe volume, but I’m skeptical about weight unless you guys have a compost heap in the back yard or are throwing non-recycling in the recycle bin. I’m not saying it’s not possible, just really unusual even for the die-hards.
My comments to the Town Admin was he was trying generate revenue from this as tipping fees for a bag will cost about $.85 and a bag costs $.23 so $1.08 should cover it. The fixed HH fee covers the trucks… and the other fixed costs including billing… I think it would be a crime for them to try to make revenue off this program.
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p>We are recycling zealots from my wife being on the committee. We also sell stuff on the internet so we end up with lots of package material from incoming and outgoing boxes… so 80% it typical for us. I do think we need to shoot for higher than 25%. “I think we can, I think we can…”
The Town can not make money on trash — it violates Prop 2.5 in fact.
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p>The danger is that if they’re budgeting for Y tons of trash with a revenue of $2 a bag and a cost of $1.08*Y, if Y is smaller they’re going to be in the hole. Smarter in my opinion to lower the bag fee a bit and raise the household fee to cover the difference, so that small variances in Y don’t produce large variances in the trash budget.
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p>Still, without a scale, I’m not buying 80% by weight. That’s a crazy high number, especially in the winter.
Seriously. Screw the deposit.
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p>I already have curbside recycling. Why should I be encouraged to lug my empties to the local grocery store and sit through the tedious task of stuffing dirty bottles into a machine for 20 minutes? Let me keep my $0.05, my free time, and my sanity.
Used to be when this all started out that you had recycling centers to bring your returns; they went out due to the fact that they couldn’t cover their costs.
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p>One thing about this expansion: it’s bad enough that if you are of the mind of returning that you’re invariably stuck with some items that the store didn’t carry, so you can’t redeem them. Now factor this expansion and you’re going to be faced with multiple trips to get this stuff back.
There seems to be far more boutique non-carbonated beverages than carbonated. In terms of brands there’s Coke and Pepsi… but for tea there’s Snapple, Lipton, AriZona, Nestea, Turkey Hill, Honest Tea, Tazo, Sweet Leaf Tea, Luzianne, Pom, Nantucket Nectar, and God knows what else.
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p>Who knows — maybe with the added number of bottles and number of manufacturers, redemption centers will make a come back.
Will these hypothetical new redemption centers provide the service of sorting and counting the returnables for you, like they did back when? Or is it going to be the same miserable experience that we encounter at grocery stores now?
But then, I don’t encounter a miserable experience at the grocer either.
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p>I drink Diet Mountain Dew at my office, and get a few additional cans from colleagues who leave them at my desk. I take them to my local grocer (big for a spa, but not a supermarket) 20 at a time. I walk up to the bins (one for cans, one for bottles) and put in the 20. Then I wait at the customer service desk for 0-3 minutes and get my buck in cash.
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p>Since the market is on my way home by foot, it’s no biggie and I’ll usually pick up a few things while I’m there.
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p>That written, I understand that not everybody has this experience. The law requires grocery stores to take back the cans — I have no idea what their capacity is required to be if they have reverse vending machines. I would hope that if the bottle bill is expanded that grocery stores will expand their capacity to accept the bottles and cans.
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p>As for service centers, obviously I have no idea how it will play out. I do know that service centers aren’t obligated to give you back the nickle — they can offer four cents instead, for example, to pay for their services.
Is that true? The store doesn’t have to give back the 5 cents? If that’s so, can’t a store just say, sorry, it costs us 6 cents to process cans so we give you nothing for your cans which we’ll accept?
but service centers don’t, in MA and in some other states IIRC.
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p>Difference: the store collects the five cents deposit; the service center solely processes the recycling.
This is a lively debate with some excellent points. I won’t try to respond to everything, but here are a few thoughts… We know the cost savings from reduced litter and trash management at the local level is real. A 1997 study estimated that an expanded bottle deposit would save communities up to $3 million a year. And that study was completed before energy drinks and flavored water became the drinks du jour. Anyone who’s seen the aftermath of a busy weekend at the park or ball field knows first-hand how unkempt it can get. Expanding the bottle bill to cover 1.5 billion more containers, as Governor Patrick has proposed, would keep our recreation areas cleaner, and save local communities money in disposal costs.
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p>In addition to less litter, cost savings for municipalities, and recovering valuable raw materials to help our economy, hundreds of local community groups that collect deposit containers as part of their fund raising efforts would benefit from the availability of an additional $75 million in deposits annually.
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p>Expanding the bottle deposit law is one significant step we can take to reduce our waste, but there are others. MassDEP has supported and will continue to support municipalities that implement new waste management systems, such as PAYT, which has been adopted by more than 120 communities in Massachusetts. These programs have dramatically increased recycling rates by having residents pay based on how much they throw out, much like how we pay for water and electricity. As new technologies and systems for managing and recovering our waste become available, MassDEP is committed to working with communities and businesses to test and implement these systems to maximize recycling and diversion while continuing to protect our environment.
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p>Let’s keep the discussion going!
those same parks aren’t going to be sparkly clean over a nickle or a dime.
The claim isn’t that parks will be “sparkly clean.” The claim is that they will be “cleaner.” That is almost certainly true.