March 24, 2009
The bottle bill grows up
Water bottles added to the mix as of April 1 — or are they?
Between 2002 and 2005, sales of plastic water bottles in the United States nearly doubled from 15 billion units sold to 29.8 billion. That’s more than seven times the 3.8 billion units sold in 1997.
—Container Recycling Institute
One item may be found in nearly every household, business, beach, ball field, backpack, school cafeteria, and minivan: a plastic water bottle. Unfortunately, when folks can’t be bothered to recycle those bottles, they may also be found along roadsides, hiking trails, streambeds, and in landfills.
Soon, however, Connecticut legislators are hoping that will change. Thanks to an expansion of the state’s “bottle bill,” most containers for water and flavored water will have a refund value of at least five cents, just like most carbonated beverage bottles do now.
The changes were due to go into effect next week, on April 1. But, consumers are not likely to see the newly labeled bottles on shelves much before Oct. 1.
In the past few weeks, the state Office of Policy Management (OPM) granted about 40 waivers to bottlers and distributors who pled undue hardship when it came to complying with the new law. Jeffrey Beckham, undersecretary for legislative affairs at the OPM, said that number represents “just about all” of the distributors in Connecticut.
Connecticut’s bottle bill has been around since 1978 (it was first implemented Jan. 1, 1980). It’s one of just 11 states (others are California, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont) that require deposits on certain beverage containers at the time of purchase; these deposits may then be redeemed when the empty bottles are returned.
Environmental concerns were the original impetus for the country’s various bottle bills. According to the Container Recycling Institute (CRI) in Glastonbury, bottle bills in the U.S. have been shown to increase recycling and to drastically reduce container litter by as much as 84%.
A statement from the state Senate Environment Committee says in the first 25 years of Connecticut’s bottle bill, an estimated 20 billion bottles and cans were prevented from ending up as litter. That translates into about 1.3 million tons of material that was recycled rather than destroyed, buried, or simply tossed aside.
Connecticut Senator Ed Meyer (D-Guilford), chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, said adding water bottles to the mix is an environmental coup.
“It’s good for the environment not just because it removes trash from our rivers and roadsides, but because it extends the life of our landfills, saves cities and towns money in trash-tipping fees, and puts glass and plastic back to use as recycled consumer goods. Connecticut has been a national leader in this regard, and now it’s time to lead the way once again with an expanded bottle bill,” Meyer said.
Senate Minority Leader John McKinney (R-Fairfield), a ranking member of the Environment Committee, agreed.
The Container Recycling Institute reports that between 2002 and 2005, sales of plastic water bottles in the United States nearly doubled from 15 billion units sold to 29.8 billion. That’s more than seven times the 3.8 billion units sold in 1997.
“Connecticut’s original redemption policy never anticipated the explosion in consumption of bottled water ... that the industry has experienced over the past several years,’’ McKinney said. “It is past time for a common-sense expansion of our bottle bill and since water ... [is] often packaged in the same containers as carbonated beverages, the infrastructure is already in place to make this change.”
But environmental concerns are only one of the reasons Connecticut’s bottle bill was expanded this year. The other: money.
The Container Recycling Institute estimates adding water bottles to Connecticut’s bottle bill could mean more than $12 million in new revenue for the state every year.
This is due in part to accounting and other changes that also were made this year to the bottle bill.
Until now, any unredeemed deposits were kept by bottlers or distributors. Now, those unredeemed nickels will become the property of the state.
In a special session in November 2008, the state Legislature required beverage distributors subject to the deposit law (the “deposit initiator,” not every retail merchant) to open separate bank accounts for container deposits and redemption payments. Distributors must report the amounts accumulated in those accounts by April 30 to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Then, on Jan. 14, the Legislature voted that any unclaimed deposit money will escheat — or be turned over — to the state’s general fund, with the first payment due on April 30.
When both the House and Senate on Feb. 25 approved an expansion of the current law to include water bottles (Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed it into law March 3), that ensured unclaimed water bottle deposits also will become the property of the state under the new law, effective April 1 — just one month later.
This “fast tracking” of the bottle bill changes also would have ensured that the state would begin reaping the rewards of any unclaimed deposit money during the current fiscal year. But it did not leave distributors much time to set up their accounts, change their practices, print new labels and bar codes, and put in place the necessary equipment and protocols for complying with the changes.
Beckham of the Office of Policy Management said timing was the main reason so many distributors applied for — and received — waivers.
“In other states where these types of changes are made, they have generally been given about a year to 18 months” in which to comply, Beckham said. Expecting distributors to make the accounting changes and bottlers to make the labeling changes “was deemed to be impractical,” he said.
Beckham also pointed out that in granting the waivers, distributors now do not have to start the new accounting practices until Oct. 1. Since they will report quarterly, the last quarter of this year will be the first one that is reported.
That means any additional revenues will not be collected by the state during the current fiscal year.
So once the newly labeled water bottles do hit the shelves, besides the traditional beer and soda, which bottles, exactly, will be “returnable” for money?
The new law states plastic or glass containers for “non-carbonated beverages” are now included in the bottle bill. These are defined as water, including flavored water, nutritionally enhanced water, and any beverage identified on a beverage’s product label as a type of water, but excluding juice and mineral water.
That means items such as sports drinks, fruit juice, iced tea and coffee drinks are not included.
Two categories of water containers are specifically exempted. They are any container larger than three liters, and any container made from high density polyethylene (with a #2 recycling symbol).
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