Statehouse bill would gut Iowa’s bottle bill

In Rod Boshart's Gazette article on Feb. 19 regarding the Iowa Senate subcommittee discussing revising the Bottle Bill, he reported the bill's sponsor, Sen. Ken Rozenboom, took umbrage at Jess Mazour of the Iowa Sierra Club stating that the proposed legislation would gut the bottle bill. But that is, in fact, what it would do.

Rozenboom's bill would allow retailers, who have opposed the bottle bill for years, to refuse to participate in taking bottle and can returns and force consumers to travel 40 miles round trip to a redemption center to return the containers. But the bill provides no incentive to encourage more conveniently located redemption centers. It does not raise the nickel deposit, nor increase the handling fee to the redemption centers. So the result would be no retailers and effectively no redemption centers to take the returned containers. That would clearly gut the bottle bill.

Rozenboom claimed that his bill would modernize the bottle bill. But if he really wanted to modernize the law, he would raise the deposit cost above a nickel, which has not been raised since the initial legislation in 1979. He would also increase the handling fee to the redemption centers from the one cent per container now in effect. Finally, Rozenboom would expand the types of containers subject to the law, to include water and juice bottles, etc., that were not in existence when the law was originally adopted.

Rozenboom clearly intends to gut the bottle bill.

Wally Taylor

Marion