Introduction

 

Every year in the U.S. five million tons of beer and soft drink cans and bottles that could be recycled, don't get recycled. More than 70 billion of these single-serve, throwaway containers end up in landfills or on beaches, playgrounds, country roads and city streets. The costs to society in wasted energy and resources, litter related costs, disposal and recycling is staggering.

There are good reasons to single out beer and soda containers from other packaging waste. Unlike most rigid packaging,

• they often are consumed away from home and tossed out of cars,
  
• they cost more than the product they deliver,
  
• they consume enormous amounts of energy in the manufacturing process, and
  
• unlike mayonnaise and pickle jars, the contents are consumed in a matter of minutes because they are primarily for 'single-serve' consumption.

Nationwide we throw away 62 percent, by weight, of all beer and soda containers sold annually. But, in states where these cans and bottles have a refund value, less than 15 percent, on average, are discarded. The refund value provides an incentive to consumers to return the containers for recycling. The ten states with bottle bills are recycling twice as much of the nation's aluminum cans, glass bottles and plastic bottles as the forty non-bottle bill states.

Soft drink manufacturers are profiting greatly from packaging. The President of Data Bank USA was quoted in Beverage World (September 1996) as saying, "Something's going on to raise profitability, and the answer is packaging. . . ." Beverage manufacturers want to profit from their packaging, but they don't want to pay any of the external costs of no-return cans and bottles.

In the forty non-bottle bill states, government and taxpayers pay to pick up can and bottle litter and dispose of or recycle one-way, no-return containers. Putting a deposit on beverage containers makes producers and consumers pay for recycling, disposal and litter cleanup costs.