The New York State legislature held a hearing on Monday to hear testimony for consideration of potential expansion of the Returnable Container Act, more commonly referred to as the "Bottle Bill."
Supporters say the 1983 law, credited with reducing litter, needs an update, and ideas include requiring some beverages to be sold in refillable containers.
In an effort to keep up with rising costs of inflation and continue to save valuable resources from going into landfills, lawmakers and advocates are proposing to increase the price of deposits to 10 cents and allow more types of bottles and cans to be accepted, like wine and liquor bottles as well as iced tea, Gatorade and milk containers.
New York’s Returnable Container Act, more commonly referred to as the "Bottle Bill," currently requires a deposit of at least 5-cent deposit on carbonated soft drinks, beer and other malt beverages, mineral water, soda water, wine products (wine coolers) and water that doesn’t contain sugar containers.
Although commonly called the Bottle Bill, the Act includes more than bottles. A deposit is required on glass, metal, and plastic containers that hold less than one gallon or 3.78 liters. It originally went into effect in 1983.
The 5¢ deposit is refunded to consumers when the empty listed containers were returned to retail centers. Any New York business selling the listed products was required to take back deposit containers to return the deposit to consumers.
Retailers and redemption centers are reimbursed the 5¢ deposit plus a 3.5-cent handling fee by the distributor or the deposit initiator for each empty beverage container returned.
TOMRA, one of the largest company in the business of processing returnables, reimburses the store or redemption center the nickle deposit plus 3 1/2 cents per container for handling.
TOMRA then charges the individual producers (Coke, Pepsi, Etc.) a fee for their part in the chain. They also recycle the materials.
Each producer is responsible for reporting their product output and the number of recycled material actually returned.
The state, New York in this case, pulls out the number of bottles, or cans that are not recycled from the producer’s account.
Last year New York State received approximately $117 million from the producers for state coffers.
Initially the Bill was met with howls of protest by both consumers paying more at the point of purchase and retail centers and retailers fearing Bottle Bill redemptions would increase labor and storage costs. Also retailers feared the clean-up costs as consumers often never rinsed out, or completely emptied the containers.
Eventually protests quieted as deposit bottle and can machines replaced human contact with the process in many businesses.
The purpose behind the Bottle Bill was reduce roadside litter and encourage recycling. "It’s estimated that the Bottle Bill has reduced roadside litter of containers by 70% average, redemption rate of 65% and has removed more than 10 million tons of containers from the waste stream," reports David Talley, Active Deputy Commissioner of the state’s DEC Office of Remediation and Materials Management.
State Assemblyman Brian Manktelow attended the meetings last week and stated that he is in favor of more recycling and upping the fee to stores and redemption centers to 10¢. He stated that with inflation and the costs of the machines, storage and handling, the 10¢ fee is necessary.
However, Manktelow added that before the Bottle Bill is changed the whole system needs to be fixed and actual recycling in general needs to be addressed. "We have to come up with a good game plan".
He also addressed the fact and realization that the market simply does not exist for some currently recycled items that end up in landfills.
The new 2024 legislative session begins on January 3rd.
