A bill to replace the state's bottle bill with a temporary 1-cent fee paid by beverage distributors is pitting environmentalists against the food and beverage industry.
A bill to replace Massachusetts bottle law with a temporary 1-cent fee paid by beverage distributors is once again pitting Massachusetts environmentalists against the food and beverage industry.
"Its an outrageous bill," said Ken Pruitt, executive director of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, which opposes the bill.
The 5-cent bottle deposit that consumers pay on soda and beer is a perennial battleground for environmentalists and businesses. The goal of the fee is to prevent litter and encourage recycling, since people can return the bottles to get their deposits back.
Voters in 2014 rejected an ballot question supported by environmentalists that would have expanded the deposit to include water, sports drinks, juice, iced tea and most other non-carbonated drinks.
Now, the Massachusetts Food Association and the Massachusetts Beverage Association are lobbying for a bill, H.646, that would repeal the 5-cent deposit on carbonated drinks. Instead, it would impose a 1-cent fee on bottles and cans for all non-diary drinks, which would be paid by beverage producers and distributors for three years. After three years, there would be no fee at all.
The bill was sponsored by state Sen. Michael Moore, D-Millbury, and state Rep. Mark Cusack, D-Braintree. It was reported with a favorable recommendation out of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy this week. However, it will still be up to House and Senate leaders whether to bring it to a vote.
Supporters of the bill estimate that the fee would generate $114 million over the three years, which would go into a new municipal recycling enhancement fund. The fund would also get $21 million in the first year from the existing bottle bill fee. (The state today gets more than $30 million a year from unclaimed bottle deposits, money that goes into the general fund.)
Eighty percent of that fund would then go to grants for cities and towns that want to improve their recycling infrastructure. For example, towns could apply for money to implement curbside recycling or single-stream recycling, in which consumers no longer have to separate different types of recyclables.
Municipalities could get money to implement pay as you throw programs, where customers pay for the amount of trash they dispose of, or to achieve parallel recycling, where recycling is picked up at the same time and location as trash. Twenty percent of the money would be earmarked for litter reduction programs, such as education and access to recycling bins in public places.
Nicole Giambusso, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Beverage Association, said this would increase the state's recycling rate by creating programs that make it easier for people to recycle.
"Not only do Massachusetts residents prefer approaches like curbside and single stream recycling, but these modern recycling programs are proven to work better," Giambusso said.
Giambusso said today, Massachusetts' recycling rate is only 38 percent - indicating that there is a need for more effective ways to recycle.
"What we really need is a comprehensive system, not targeting individual bottles and cans but the entire waste stream," Giambusso said.
Delaware adopted a similar model in 2010, and bill supporters note that its recycling rate increased from 33 percent to 42 percent.
Moore said he supported the original bottle bill. But he now believes it does not address all the state's needs, and attempts to expand it have been unsuccessful.
"The bottle bill had a time. It's now time to move on to a more comprehensive way of doing it," Moore said. "We have the technology and resources today to accomplish it in a better way."
Moore said moving more communities to single stream recycling or pay as you throw programs is more effective than bottle redemption.
Moore and Giambusso said the fee is only needed for three years, because after that, communities will have the infrastructure in place.
"At some point, as long as the original investment is there for the cities and towns to set up the programs, is the additional revenue needed?" Moore asked.
But environmentalists counter that eliminating the bottle bill - in favor of a smaller, temporary fee - will increase litter and decrease recycling.
Pruitt called the bottle bill "the single most successful recycling measure in the history of Massachusetts." He said the 1-cent litter tax will not have the same effect as the deposit, since the deposit gives people an incentive to pick up bottles from the streets and recycle them.
"The model works because it's almost as if all six million plus Massachusetts residents are volunteer litter collectors," Pruitt said. "People see these things, collect them and bring them to be recycled and redeemed, because they have value."
"If you eliminate value on containers, no one will be interested in picking up cans and bottles from along roadsides, sidewalks, parks," Pruitt said. "What they're proposing is hilariously insufficient, and it doesn't work from a standpoint of reducing litter."
Pruitt said the money that would be raised from the 1-cent fee would severely underfund the cost of the proposed programs, like public recycling bins in municipalities. And once the tax sunsets, the burden of collecting the recycling and maintaining the programs would fall to city and town taxpayers.
"After a few years, there's nothing left," Pruitt said. "The bottle bill's gone. The litter tax ends. We have all the litter that we used to have, and the cities and towns that are already overburdened have to pay to maintain these recycling bins that the litter tax used to pay for."
