Under the Sun
A bottle bill would trash
our disposable cultureOn Saturdays, the clinking and chugging of the soda man's truck backing into our driveway sent us kids scrambling. We had to make sure each of the 24 squares in the battered wooden delivery crate had a glass occupant, rinsed and intact. Otherwise, we'd forfeit the deposit fee and the next round of soda water would cost our parents a few cents more.
With a family of seven children, every penny counted in our household. If a bottle broke, we'd scour the neighborhood for a replacement, but hardly anyone threw away a soda bottle in those days because they were worth something.
Curious how practices that make sense often get lost as modern life progresses. Putting down a deposit for a bottle as an incentive for its return swings hard against our present disposable culture. But as the stuff we throw away jams landfills and blemishes the landscape, the bottle bill before the state Legislature is clearly an idea whose time has come again.
The measure would charge beverage distributors a 7-cent fee for every glass, plastic or metal container of soft drinks, beer, fruit drinks and the like. The fee likely will pass from the distributor to the retailer and to consumers. No surprise.
Here's the good part: Consumers get back 5 cents when they return the container. The rest of the fee would cover the cost of redemption operations. In other words, the net increase for a can of Diet Pepsi would be 2 cents -- not a whole lot to pay for less litter and less waste in our crammed landfills.
The opala divisions of every county in the state favor the bottle bill as the cheapest, easiest method for recycling the 75,000 bottles and cans thrown in the trash every hour -- yep, every hour -- in Hawaii. The program is flexible so as not to burden retailers and grocery businesses unduly. Stores with on-site redemption centers would benefit from the increased consumer traffic.
People don't seem to have a problem with the bottle bill. In an unscientific poll at Longs Kaimuki last Sunday, a middle-aged fellow said that with all the litter he sees around town he'd be glad to pay a little more for the 60 cans of Diet Coke he was buying on sale.
"I could come out ahead, even," he said, if he could redeem the scores of cans and plastic bottles he finds abandoned outside his house every week.
A young woman with two preschool children in tow said any increase in the Aloha Maid drinks she buys would hurt her food budget, but "the kids drink too much sugar anyway. Maybe we can cut down." A bruddah in his 20s juggling a couple of six-packs said paying extra won't change his buying habits. "Your buds coming ovah, gotta have the beer." When told he'd get back 5 cents on every empty, he brightened. "Oh, so like when you get low on cash, you can grab the cans -- not bad. So when 'dis going start?"
Soon, I hope. The bottle bill is still alive at the Legislature. Beverage distributors have lobbied hard against it, proposing instead curbside recycling, a plan that would be costly to taxpayers and unburden the industry of any responsibility. Distributors contend the bill will hurt sales, but that hasn't happened in any other area with similar programs.
Putting value in what would end up as litter works. Local schools with recycling centers have raised thousands of dollars to use for things like building repairs. A California couple even collected enough containers to pay for their son's tuition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That's a whole lot of cans and bottles.
As kids, we were never that diligent, but the empties we did find would be enough to trade for a Big Hunk or a couple of dried squids at 10th Avenue Market. Mrs. Hata would cradle them in her apron and take them out to the alley behind her store. Sometimes, we'd peek back there and marvel at the treasure trove of bottles, wondering how much candy we would have gotten had we found them all.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin for 25 years.
She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.