COURTESY CITY RECYCLING OFFICE OF HONOLULUBottle bill a boon | We can do betterMotherhood, apple pie and recycling -- who could oppose them? But is a bottle bill the best way to get rid of litter and conserve resources, or will it be an expensive, inconvenient boondoggle? The Price of Paradise takes a look at both sides of the debate. Since the new law doesn't take effect until 2005, alternatives are still redeemable.
The Price of Paradise appears each week in the Sunday Insight section. The mission of POP is to contribute lively and informed dialog about public issues, particularly those having to do with our pocketbooks. Reader responses will appear in Thursday's paper. If you have thoughts to share about today's POP articles, please send them, with your name and daytime phone number, to pop@starbulletin.com, or write to Price of Paradise, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana, Honolulu, HI 96813.
John Flanagan
Contributing EditorBACK TO TOP
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Hawaii’s new
By Suzanne Jones
bottle bill is a boonTHERE'S no disputing the benefits of a bottle bill for keeping Hawaii a paradise.
Recycling rates will be the highest possible, recovering more than 80 percent of our beverage containers. Litter will reach an all-time low, with beverage containers virtually disappearing from our landscape.
Hard data to support these claims come from the 10 other bottle bill states, some of which have been in operation for 30 years. Once the deposit system is implemented in 2005, Hawaii's 800 million beverage containers -- aluminum, glass and plastic -- will be redirected to recycling facilities each year. That's 50,000 tons not headed to disposal.
Our costs to operate the deposit system are clear, too. We'll all pay a nickel deposit, plus a penny-and-a-half container fee each time we purchase a beverage. We get the nickel back when we return the empties to redemption centers.
The penny-and-a-half, along with any unredeemed deposits, will fund redemption center operators and subsidize recycling processing costs. Based on estimated per capita consumption -- 600 beverages per person per year -- each person will pay an additional $9 per year, $45 if you don't redeem your containers.
These are the facts that persuaded our legislators to pass the bottle bill and our governor to sign it into law -- facts plus overwhelming public support documented by a public-opinion survey and hundreds of individuals and organizations who took the time to testify their support.
So why does the debate continue? Because the food and beverage industry still adamantly opposes a deposit system and hopes to repeal the bill before it is implemented in 2005.
If they can convince you that the monetary burden to consumers will far exceed what we naive government administrators have estimated, you might go along.
Be skeptical when you hear numbers tossed about for peripheral cost estimates. For example, the Hawaii Food Industry Association maintains consumers likely will see higher prices. They say the average cost per store will be $100,000.
A beer distributor convinced a local bar and restaurant owner that it will cost him an additional 30 cents per beer just to keep the beer bottles separated in order to redeem their deposits.
COURTESY OF THE CITY RECYCLING OFFICE OF HONOLULU
Workers at the Honolulu Recovery Systems Center at Sand Island sort aluminum, glass and plastic containers for recycling.
The industry has yet to detail such costs. Despite such inflated claims, real data indicate the cost of beverages in deposit states is no greater than in non-deposit states.
Hawaii's deposit system will get the full support of our local recycling industry -- companies that have been doing business here for decades and are now gearing up to provide redemption-center support.
They will work with the state and counties to ensure there is a redemption center conveniently located for everyone -- in shopping areas and at existing recycling centers and transfer stations.
Some will be manual operations, where you can take bags of beverage containers and weight-to-volume conversions will simplify the transaction. Other redemption centers might use automated reverse vending machines. The cost to run these redemption centers will be supported by the system's handling fee.
Stores are not required to handle redemption if they choose not to, but they fret that customer pressure will force them to do so anyway. In this case, recycling companies will be ready to step in and handle redemption for them.
This could be as simple as stores allowing reverse vending machines to be placed at their storefronts at no cost. Being responsive to customer demands will be good business.
Hawaii deserves a deposit system. As we consider the price of paradise, common sense and love for our islands tell us the cost to recycle and preserve paradise is far less than the cost of throwing it all away.
Suzanne Jones has been recycling coordinator for the City & County of Honolulu since 1990. More information about the bottle bill, city recycling programs and waste management can be found at www.opala.org. BACK TO TOP
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We can do better
By Gary Yoshioka
than the bottle billFirst, let's look at what we all have in common: We love the beauty of our islands, our diverse cultures, and our unique aloha spirit. We all want to keep Hawaii a special place to live. That's not a bad starting point. All we need to do is agree on the most effective and practical way to go about accomplishing this.
Bottle bills -- where the consumer must pay an extra charge for every bottle or container purchased -- are not new. They are, in fact, an old and inefficient means for reducing outdoor and residential trash. It's not coincidental that a bottle bill has not been enacted by any other state in 16 years: Bottle bills fall short of their promises.
It should be made clear that all businesses involved with beverage containers -- soft drink, juice, bottled water and beer companies, supermarkets and mom-and-pop stores -- favor litter control and recycling.
The cost and impracticality for the beverage and retailing industries as well as consumers is the primary reason we oppose the bottle bill. There are more cost effective and more practical ways to reduce litter and trash, and we are ready to participate.
We are an island state, and cannot easily be compared with other states on this issue. Still, recycling has been tried in many places, under a variety of conditions, and all the evidence leads to the conclusion that comprehensive recycling programs get the job done better for more materials, more consumer convenience and less overall cost.
Let's consider a few other points:
>> Proponents' claims notwithstanding, the bottle bill will not significantly reduce municipal solid waste, landfill problems or roadside litter. Reliable surveys shows that beverage containers constitute less than 2 percent of our solid waste, and less than 7 percent of our roadside litter.Comprehensive recycling works better. When given a choice, consumers choose curbside recycling over bottle bills by significant margins. Curbside recycling is practical in larger towns and cities like Honolulu. Enhanced drop-off centers work best in rural areas, such as on the neighbor islands.So even if the bottle bill delivered as promised (which experience says it will not), the impact on our landfill and litter problems would be marginal, at best.
>> The bottle bill is a tax. You can call it other things, but this is the only bottle bill in the nation where consumers face a fee on top of the 5-cent deposit. The fee, which begins at one-half cent this October and eventually will rise to 1.5 cents, goes directly to the state treasury.
>> Proponents of the bottle bill dismiss the additional financial cost imposed by this measure upon average- and lower-income consumers. The extra 6.5 cents to drink a bottle of fruit juice or a can of soda will be felt with each and every purchase, for as long as the bottle bill exists.
>> It remains to be seen how this legislation will be implemented and administered. State bureaucrats will determine the locations of redemption centers and distances to travel to reclaim 5 cents of the 6.5 per container fee. You may find yourself traveling to inconvenient locations to redeem containers.
Both enable households to recycle a wide range of waste materials -- paper, plastics, glass, metals, yard wastes and white goods -- in addition to beverage containers.
Accordingly, thousands of communities have implemented curbside recycling programs -- many with notable success -- while not one state since 1986 has opted for a bottle bill, until now.
We can do much better for our islands than the recently passed bottle bill.
Gary Yoshioka is spokesperson for Hawaii Citizens for Comprehensive Recycling, a group advocating progressive recycling alternatives. He also is general manager of The Pepsi Bottling Group of Hawaii.
