State Update

West Virginia: Activists Petition for State Bottle Bill

Delaware:
State Seeks to Capture Unredeemed Deposits

let.  CAG is working with a coalition of activists, municipalities and other organizations to introduce a beverage container deposit bill in the part-time legislature's 2003 session.  Mallet said they expect to hear the same industry arguments used elsewhere to fight bottle bills and their expansions. 
In preparation for the campaign, CAG is spearheading a statewide petition drive to educate the public and generate support for the bottle bill.  To date, they have collected over 2,000 signatures across the state and through an on-line petition on their website at www.wvcag.org.
"West Virginia comes in 50^th in the nation on many rankings", said Mallet.  We don't want to be 50^th in recycling beverage containers."  Mallet says the tourism market will continue to expand as the state attracts suburbanites from neighboring states who want to get away to the rivers and mountains of West Virginia.  "In a state where tourism is our future, a West Virginia bottle bill makes all the sense in the world," she said.

Contact: Linda Mallet (WV-CAG), 304-346-5891, linda@wvcag.org and visit www.wvcag.org.

WILMINGTON--Passed in 1981, Delaware's container deposit law requires distributors and bottlers to collect a 5-cent deposit on beer and carbonated soft drink bottles sold.  Delaware is the only state that exempts aluminum cans from the deposit requirement. Currently, bottlers and distributors keep the unredeemed deposits, but they may soon be handing those monies over to the state government. 
To help reduce this years' $95 million budget deficit, Governor Ruth Ann Miner's budget office wants to capture bottle deposits unclaimed by consumers for more than five years.  Other states escheat the unredeemed deposits such as, Michigan and Massachusetts. The Delaware Office of the Budget is looking into the legality of capturing these monies under abandoned property laws.  Currently under such laws, the state captures about $156 million in unclaimed funds from bank accounts and stock funds.  They hope to collect the unredeemed container deposits before the state's budget year ends on June 30.