Iowa needs a better bottle bill

By Troy Willard

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Since starting my business, The Can Shed, in Cedar Rapids, I have seen the current Bottle Bill save millions of aluminum cans, plastic bottles and glass bottles from landfills and protect our natural resources. It is my strong belief that our container deposit system will always be the most effective system for the recovery of beverage containers.

The Iowa Legislature is considering a better Bottle Bill, which would save an additional half-billion containers from our landfills by expanding the scope of the law to include the non-carbonated beverages that didn't exist 30 years ago.

Many promote curbside recycling as an easy, cost-effective option. Research shows that only 26 percent of non-deposit containers are recovered with curbside options and many of the containers collected are not recycled at all. Rather, they are thrown in the landfill as a mixture of materials too contaminated to be recycled. The Department of Natural Resources' latest Waste Characterization Study illustrates the limitations of using curbside recycling to recover beverage containers. From 1998 to 2011, the amount of non-deposit plastic containers going into our landfills has doubled.

Our deposit system boasts an 86 percent recovery rate. A better Bottle Bill would bring an estimated 500 million containers. Such containers are petroleum-based and energy-intensive to manufacture. Recycling these containers would save the equivalent of 123,000 barrels of crude oil.

Delaware repealed its Bottle Bill in favor of “universal recycling.” The plan places a 4-cent, non-refundable, fee on beverage containers to fund programs that support recycling. Even with that fee, they are facing a $2.2 million annual shortfall. The costs for this kind of plan for Iowa would be astronomical and would be funded on the backs of the taxpayers. Conversely, six fellow bottle bill states have modernized their laws to include plastic beverage containers. These states, their distributors, retailers and consumers have found ways to cope with the system and still experience recovery rates far exceeding any state without deposit legislation. Recent polling by Selzer & Co. shows 84 percent of Iowans have a favorable view of the Bottle Bill. The poll also found strong support for expansion.

By including the new non-carbonated beverages in the Bottle Bill, the system would see an injection of money needed to support redemption centers and retailers while having little impact on distributors.

The better Bottle Bill takes the confusion out of redemption, encourages recycling and guarantees high recovery rates.

Troy Willard of Cedar Rapids has been a redemption center owner for 15 years. Comments: troyw@canshed.com