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Your Government Inaction: Bottle Bills
A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I paid a visit to our daughter in Massachusetts. In the parking lot of her apartment, I discovered this delightful tableau:
Now I know what you’re thinking: How could this be? Doesn’t Massachusetts have a bottle bill?
Bottle bills were originally introduced in the 1970s as a roadside pollution control measure. The idea is simplicity itself in concept. When the consumer buys a beverage in a disposable container there is a charge or deposit that is returned when the consumer brings the empty can or bottle back to the store. Proponents of the law also asserted that it would increase recycling and reduce the volume of trash going into landfills.
As I’ve shared in this space before, I was a recycler before recycling was cool. My Mom helped set up the first recycling center in Santa Fe, NM, and I earned a lot of pocket money into my teens recycling aluminum cans and deposit bottles I picked up. When I heard that the State of New Mexico was considering adopting a bottle law, I thought it would be a great idea. Then I looked at the details. Apparently the state legislators also actually looked at the details, because, mirable dictu, the bill did not pass.
Massachusetts, on the other hand, adopted a bottle bill in 1983. Consumers were charged a nickel for every can or bottle containing “beer and other malt beverages, carbonated soft drinks, {or} mineral waters.” Containers holding “Wine, dairy products, natural fruit juices, non-carbonated drinks, and alcoholic beverages other than beer and malt beverages” were exempt because no one who consumes any of those beverages ever litters, doncha know. I’m sure that the fact that wine drinkers are, ahem, a different class than the proles who drink beer has nothing to do with that part of the law. Care to guess what the most common beverage sold under the “non-carbonated drinks” category is? I’ll give you a clue: Two of the containers in the photo above used to be filled with this substance. Yes, it’s our old friend Dihydrogen Monoxide.
Now when you want to return the container, it’s a simple process. Here is a helpful two-page, fourteen-point guide from the state on how to get your own money back:
I’ll give the highlights for those of you who didn’t want to read the whole thing. If a business doesn’t sell that particular item, you don’t get your money back. If the container is not empty, free of debris, and “reasonably intact,” you don’t get your money back. You can’t get your deposit back on more than 120 containers ($6.00) a day. If the specific product has been discontinued at that store for more than two months, you don’t get your money back.
To my eyes, the most interesting point in this list is the last one. You can be fined $100 for asking for a 5¢ refund on a soda can bought out of state. Massachusetts is bordered by five other states and within twenty miles of a sixth, so a lot of beverage containers are carried in from other states. Apparently, no one from out-of-state litters in Massachusetts. I would guess that the number of cans and bottles purchased in Massachusetts and taken out of state would be about the same as the number being brought in. Anyway, why does it matter if your goal is to reduce littering, increase recycling, and decrease the volume of trash going into landfills?
I’m kidding, of course. There is a very good reason for making it illegal, with stiff penalties, to ask for refunds on containers brought from out of state. Tell me in the comments if you think you know why.
My daughter told me that she doesn’t return beverage containers for refunds anymore “because the machines never accept them.” I decided to test the process out myself. I went to a nearby supermarket and found this outside one of the doors:
Supposedly, you just place your can or bottle in the circular opening of the correct machine and it returns a slip you can either cash in or use for store credit. I had three plastic pop bottles that I had actually purchased at another store. The ‘Plastic’ machine accepted them and gave me a credit slip. The ‘Can’ machine, on the other hand, did not accept a single one of the aluminum cans I proffered. This included a Rockstar® energy drink can that I’d found. There was a trash can next to the machines, but no recycling bin. So much for reducing waste and increasing recycling. As I walked into the store to get my 15¢, I observed a Rockstar® display. I guess the machine hadn’t gotten the memo.
I wanted to try some other options, but, oddly, my wife and daughter said they had better things to do than finding regional recycling centers or haggling with clerks at drug, convenience, and liquor stores. And apparently, a lot of other people feel the same way. All the roadblocks to getting the deposits have made people less likely to do so. According to this page from a pro bottle bill website, the number of containers returned has steadily decreased over the last decade, reaching just 50% in 2019. And that was before Massachusetts suspended the returns altogether in 2020 due to the Wuhan Virus. Of course, they kept charging a nickel for every can or bottle being purchased.
Because that money all goes to the state; every penny that a store takes in above redemptions has to be sent along to the State of Massachusetts. In other words, the bottle bill is just a sneaky tax on people who drink the wrong kind of beverages and don’t want to go through the hassle of overcoming the barriers the state has put in their way.
Bottle bill proponents also say that the program employs “2000-2400” people across the state. They mention a few productive jobs, like the people who process material for recycling. I’ll bet most of those people would have jobs anyway if recycling was entirely run by private industry. Most of the jobs are unproductive make-work positions that wouldn’t exist if the state didn’t sneakily take millions of dollars from consumers. There are lawyers, accountants, and inspectors to ensure that retailers are following the law. And truck drivers. Lots of truck drivers.
I did an experiment where I compared the volume of “reasonably intact” cans to flattened cans:
Three intact cans take up about the same amount of space as 18 flattened cans. In other words, the law requires you to use six times as much gas, put six times as much wear and tear on roads and equipment, and, most importantly, employ six times as many truck drivers to transport the same amount of material.
So, you have a law that was supposed to:
A. Reduce litter.
B. Increase recycling.
C. Decrease landfill usage.
Instead, the law actually:
D. Extracts money consumers and gives it to the government.
E. Creates unproductive government jobs.
F. Punishes consumers of certain low-status products.
G. May or may not accomplish goals A, B, and C, but. . .
H. Makes elites and politicians feel good about themselves.
Old habits die hard, and I continue to recycle all the cans I use. I also pick up cans I find on the street or in a parking lot and toss them in a bag in the garage. Texas doesn’t have a bottle bill, so every month or so I take the cans to a nearby recycling center. There is not a two-page, fourteen-point guide posted telling me how to recycle. I hand a guy the sack of cans. He doesn’t care what was in the cans or where they came from. It doesn’t matter to him if the cans are not “free of debris and reasonably intact.” I can bring as many cans as I want to be recycled, the more the better. He puts the bag on a scale and gives me some cash. The entire transaction takes two minutes and I end up with about a penny per can.
You may think that 1¢ is not much, but it’s more than any Massachusetts resident gets. The person who can’t or won’t return containers is losing 5¢ on each purchase. The average consumer there is losing 2½¢. The die-hard recycler, who carefully sorts and stores the cans and bottles, has to work a lot harder than me just to break even.
A couple of years ago, I visited my brother in California. While there, I saw people pulling returnable cans and bottles out of residential recycling bins on trash day. I also saw the police detaining and citing those same people for doing that. If the purpose of bottle bills is to decrease litter, increase recycling, and reduce solid waste in landfills, what does it matter who is collecting the containers?
A little later, my brother came to visit me in Texas. He commented on how clean the streets were compared to California. I know what you’re thinking: How could that be? Doesn’t California have a bottle bill?
Published in Humor
To the east of Seattle, about 30 miles, is the town of North Bend. Behind North Bend a dramatic uplift called Mount Si rises nearly 3500′. Si has a couple of trails to the top, both are steep and challenging, but every weekend, and often during the week the parking lot is filled with expensive SUVs. Back when I lived in Seattle I climbed Mount Si somewhere over 150 times, sometimes twice in the same day. It was frequently the only place you could get that much elevation gain, without having to climb through miles of deep, soft snow. Si did have snow on the upper slopes in winter, but rarely until you reached the 3000′ level, and, then with only 1000 or so feet to gain, it was not unreasonable for a seasoned hiker or climber.
I told you that to tell you this. On almost any trip I took to the top there were empty soda cans left in the basin below the final summit rocks. Most people consider the basin the top. It is only the heartier who scramble the final 100′ to the actual summit. Anyway, it always amazed me the someone would carry a six pack of sodas to the Haystack Basin (the rocky summit was called the Haystack), up more than 3000 feet of pretty steep trail and then not carry the almost weightless empty cans back down again. It was as though, once empty, the cans took on a yuck factor that made any further handling of them disgusting. My guess is that the majority of those who left the cans behind were older adolescents, the ones who so often express concern about what we are doing to the environment. (How Dare You!) They were probably the same ones who emptied the ashtrays of the cars in the parking lot.
On my rides through the area these days I often spot a Native American man who having parked his car is walking along the highway collecting aluminium cans people have discarded out of their car windows. I suspect that he is taking them to a recycling place and getting paid for them. We have never talked, but he recognizes me by my outfit, and I recognize him since we see each other quite often. It don’t think he is particularly concerned about the environment, just supplementing whatever income he has from other sources. I like and respect him, none the less. The fact that he can make enough money doing what he is doing to want to continue shows just how many idiots are out there.
In our town, leave it at the curb with the rest of your trash on trash day. Our municipal trash staff just throw the whole mattress into the open back of the regular trash truck. Though I think they’d prefer you leave it out on the week that is for “bulk pickup” (third week of the month in our neighborhood) when they have an open top bin truck with a claw crane to pick up large items like furniture. I have also seen whole grills picked up by the municipal trash truck.
All regular trash must be bagged, and they prefer it NOT be in a bin, as two men walk along with the truck, pick up the bags from the curb, and toss the bags into the open back of the trash truck. Having to fish the bags out of a bin slows down their process. I am impressed with how fast a 3 man truck (one driver, two tossers) can collect the trash on our street. Something motivates the guys on foot to move quickly. I wonder if they get paid on a basis other than hourly, or if they get some type of productivity bonuses.
Curbside recycling in our town is voluntary (and the homeowner pays extra). Put the clean and dry recyclables into a large covered bin, which a man who rides on the back of the recycling truck manually dumps into the back of the truck. The recycling truck is a 2 man truck. The city has said cardboard and metal are really the only recyclable materials that are cost-effective to recycle.
So SF is ahead of the curve? Like Tabby said when you take the blue cart out to the sidewalk (recycle stuff) the vagrants snap it up within an hour or two to get the cans and bottles to “recycle.” Will have mine out in about an hour for this week. But lots of messes in the meantime. Which the garbage guys won’t bother with. But we are somehow saving the planet, right?
My guess would be they get paid by the day/route, so the sooner they’re done, the sooner they are off work and can go do what they want with their time.
Excellent thoughts. But please tell me you’re not hinting that government is a bloated, inefficient machine, and that the private sector is better suited to deal with societal litter, pollution, and waste management issues. No, you can’t be saying that.
Gorsh, I never thought of that. Maybe I should do a series of posts tagged “Your Government Inaction.”
In many situations, Government INaction would be the best possible thing, and quite welcome.