More bottle bill updates in the works

More bottle bill updates in the works

By Editorial Staff, Resource Recycling

Two New England states ponder changes to their bottle bill, and an island territory struggles to get its going.

Two bills in the Vermont Legislature would expand the state's bottle bill to all recyclable beverage containers except those containing milk, reports vtdigger.org [1]. The bill is currently being opposed by the Vermont Beverage Association.

A report [2] recently issued by bottle bill advocates the Container Recycling Institute and the Vermont Public Interest Research group highlights the success of the state's bottle bill and finds that it is a better way than single-stream curbside collection to recover these containers for recycling. The report found that locations with both bottle deposits and curbside recycling have higher recycling rates with overall lower costs. It also concluded that bottle deposits produce higher quality material and are an effective way of capturing containers consumed while on the go.

In Maine, there are at least five bills in the legislature that would update the state's bottle bill. The updates would bring some sweeping changes to Maine's bottle deposit system, particularly one measure [3] that would create redemption centers and another [4] that would alter administrative responsibilities of the program. Others, which haven't been printed yet, would expand the containers covered by the program and ease some requirements of distributors.

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