VPIRG wants to expand the “bottle bill.”
The left-leaning consumer affairs group released a report on Wednesday about the positive environmental impact of expanding Vermont’s beverage deposit return program to include water bottles and containers for non-carbonated drinks.
VPIRG advocates also touted the potential financial advantages of the expanded bottle redemption program. The group says the state could bank on $1.27 million in additional revenue from unredeemed deposits.
The report lends support to three bills in the House and Senate – H.727, S.176 and S.195 – that call for expanding the state’s bottle/beverage recycling system and state collection of unredeemed deposits. Vermont first instituted a beverage container law in 1973. Most bottles carry a 5 cent deposit; liquor containers, which were added to the law in 1990, have a 15 cent deposit. According to VPIRG, this program has an 85 percent recycling rate and its expansion is supported by 86 percent of the state.
According to VPIRG’s new findings, prepared by CM Consulting, Vermont could collect $1.27 million a year in unredeemed revenue from recycling an additional 96.7 million bottles and cans. Expanded collection could create 100 full-time jobs, the report says.
Sen. Vincent Illuzzi, R-Essex-Orleans, a sponsor of S.176, told reporters the legislation is an attempt to bring the law up to date.
“The world has dramatically changed since Vermont’s first bottle bill was enacted into law,” Illuzzi said. “During that period, society has changed. And we are now using more and more plastics to consume beverages which 30 years ago were really unknown.”
Gov. Peter Shumlin is against the bill; he favors mandatory recycling.
“I believe in this country we will be fighting each other for garbage for energy and products,” said Shumlin. “Our goal should be 100 percent recycling. If we had mandatory recycling, we wouldn’t need a mandatory bottle bill in Vermont.”
Andrew Maclean, a lobbyist representing the Beverage Association of Vermont, was also critical of the loss of revenue to facilities like Chittenden Solid Waste District, which sells recycling waste once it is sorted. Casella Waste System operates the facility in a profit-sharing agreement.
“Our position is, one is, that this material is valuable, as you have economies in the Far East heating up, PET, which is the plastic bottles and aluminum are becoming more and more expensive,” Maclean said. “What this bill would do is divert that valuable material from the traditional material that Chittenden Solid Waste District collects so that the material they count on to earn a profit and subsidize some of the stuff that’s less valuable, like compost or construction debris or paper or glass, you’re taking that away from them. And this bill would exacerbate that problem.”
VPIRG Executive Director Paul Burns explained that the bottle deposit expansion could co-exist with a recycling program.
“The reason why you would retain a bottle bill – one of them for instance is it applies to primarily single-serve beverages, things that are not exclusively consumed in your home as your mayonnaise jar might be,” he said. “So that’s the kind of thing that you might easily want to put in your blue bin, but if you’re drinking a can of soda on the road, and so forth, you don’t have your blue bin right there. So it makes sense to have these kinds of redemption programs for all those kinds of beverage containers.”
Shumlin received a $2,000 campaign contribution from the Beverage Association of Vermont in 2010 and $500 from Casella Waste Systems, according to followthemoney.org.
