December 3, 2008
Bonita council puts a cap on bottle bill idea
BONITA SPRINGS — A Bonita Springs City Council discussion over whether the city should encourage state legislators to adopt a bottle bill turned into a new recycling policy for city-sponsored special events Wednesday.
The council did not decide to add to their legislative platform a bottle bill that would provide a cash incentive to Floridians who recycle drinking containers, but council did make it mandatory for recycling containers to be placed at all city-sponsored events.
The idea came when Councilman John Spear opposed the idea of using city resources to support the state-level bottle bill issue.
“I think we burn up a lot of city and community energy focusing on a statewide issue. We could have staff spend a lot of time on this and I think it’s a drop in the bucket,” Spear said. “Think globally and act locally.”
Spear related his experience with a Celebrate Bonita event a year ago, during which he distributed plastic-bottled beverages to attendees and realized there were no recycling containers for them to dispose of the bottles.
Discussion over the bottle bill started due to a new state mandate lumped into a recently-passed energy bill that Florida reach a recycling rate of 75 percent by 2020. Councilman Richard Ferreira had suggested the council support a bottle bill in June 2007 and rehashed the issue due to the new mandate.
“I am absolutely 100 percent for a bottle bill,” Ferreira said. “A plastic bottle discarded in Estero Bay is going to last 900 years. Now, whether we are underwater at that point, no one knows, but it’s vital for the environment.”
Ferreira got the idea after going on a litter pick-up in the area of Hickory Boulevard leading out to Fort Myers Beach. The group, which included his wife, found 10 bags of trash. He said the bags were filled with bottles, scattered along the road within eye shot of Estero Bay.
“Those plastics on a high tide or a hurricane could all end up going into Estero Bay,” Ferreira said. “This is one way to start our green programs.”
If there were an incentive, Ferreira said, then the bottles wouldn’t be there.
As it turns out, litter control is the most well agreed upon advantages to bottle bills, according to Keith Howard, Lee County solid waste deputy director.
Howard noted that the programs are normally set up through a deposit system. Bottlers must charge a few extra cents for each bottled beverage. If the can or bottle is returned, the returner gets their deposit back. Bottlers, not surprisingly, aren’t thrilled with bottle bills, Howard said.
Howard also noted that it requires the creation of a new bureaucracy. Oftentimes, the programs run on an assumption that all the bottles and cans will not be returned. In other words, that some of the deposits will be kept, that’s how the bottlers can become interested, as they may receive extra revenue through the program. But what if all the containers are returned?
“They rely on a certain amount of unrecovered deposits to fund the program,” Howard said. “The system would be in financial difficulty if it worked perfectly.”
Discussed thoroughly at the council meeting was the cost of such a program, specifically the machines at grocery stores used to collect the containers and deliver deposits. Councilman Pat McCourt said he lived in Michigan, one of 11 states to have a bottle bill, according to the Container Recycling Institute, which lobbies for the bills.
“That equipment costs something,” McCourt said. “That grocer can’t handle it, so it gets passed on to us as an additional cost. All of this gets down ultimately to another consumer.”
Ferreira noted that the states which have passed the bills have not repealed them, and that they all have different ways of distributing deposits, including reclamation centers located close to citizens’ homes. Mayor Ben Nelson made similar comments, in response to members of the public that had come forward with concerns the dirty bottles would be returned to grocery stores.
“We used to be in the grocery business up in Minnesota and the last thing we wanted to see was all the bottles coming back into the grocery store that we wanted to keep clean,” said Lorraine Soderquist, 82, who volunteered with her church, Christus Victor Lutheran, in picking up litter on Old 41 Road. The church was presented a proclamation for its 10-year litter-cleaning efforts at the beginning of the meeting.
“It doesn’t work like that anymore, they are machines. They sit outside and you get money out of the machines,” Nelson said. “It’s not like that anymore. It’s done a lot different.”
Others said the bottle bill wouldn’t reduce the litter because they disagreed that containers are causing the problem. Soderquist said it wasn’t bottles she has been picking up during her hours on Old 41 Road.
“The most common thing was empty packs of cigarettes,” Soderquist said.
Either way, though, recycling needs to increase, at least if the state goal is to be met. Locally, about 35 percent of Lee County residents’ trash ends up at the county’s recycling plant, Howard said. The county is in the top five in the state, he said.
But, as City Manager Gary Price noted, it’s a long way from the state’s 75 percent mandate.
“I don’t see how they could meet that 75 percent goal,” Price said, “without having a bottle bill.”
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2008/dec/03/bonita-council-puts-cap-bottle-bill-idea/