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Bottle bill advocates With a giant inflatable bottle and trashbags full of bottles and cans as props, about 100 people rallied at the state Capitol yesterday to urge legislators to pass a bottle bill this session.
rally at the Capitol
The measure calls for a 7-cent
Other bills in progress
deposit on beverage containersBy Diana Leone
dleone@starbulletin.com
Rosemarie Tucker attended the rally because seeing trash along Hawaii's roadways "makes me sick at heart," she said. "I've driven through many states and they all look pristine compared to this one."
Deposits on beverage containers will not solve all trash problems, she said, but "it's a beginning."
The bill calls for a 7-cent deposit on most beverage containers. Five cents would be refundable while the other 2 cents would be used to run a statewide beverage recycling program.
According to those at the rally, 75,000 beverage containers are thrown away in Hawaii every hour and the state should promote recycling by requiring refundable deposits.
The Sierra Club and others sponsoring the event praised Gov. Ben Cayetano, who yesterday urged the Legislature to pass the bill. "I will be happy to sign it into law. It will make Hawaii a cleaner place to live," he said.
Meanwhile, the merits of a bottle bill continue to be challenged by Hawaii Citizens for Comprehensive Recycling, a coalition of beverage and food industry representatives.
Newspaper ads purchased by the food and beverage industry label the deposit as a $26 million "tax."
"It's unfortunate that proponents of the bottle bill are misleading the public and some legislators into believing it is good for Hawaii," said Gary Yoshioka, general manager of Pepsi Hawaii and spokesman for the coalition.
City of Honolulu recycling coordinator Suzanne Jones countered that it is the beverage industry that is being less than straightforward in its ad.
"I think it's about time the beverage industry broadened their perspective on this issue," Jones said.
The cost to consumers of the beverage coalition's proposed curbside recycling program, which would be funded largely by the government instead of a fee on containers, would be "much, much higher" than the bottle bill, said Robert Harris, a member of the Environmental Law Society at the University of Hawaii law school.
Until yesterday, there were two ways a bottle bill could have passed this session. But Senate Bill 2266, House Draft 2, no longer is being considered, because of legal concerns over a technical error in the drafting of the bill, according to Rep. Mina Morita (D, Haiku-Hana, Hanalei-Kapaa), chairwoman of the House Energy and Environmental Protection Committee.
So House Bill 1256, Senate Draft 2, which was held over in a House-Senate conference committee from last year, becomes the battleground between the two sides. A conference committee hearing has not been scheduled.
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