Michigan is finding that a dime is insufficient--every year Michigan sees more and more discarded deposit cans and bottles littering the streets. The recycling rates have been declining there for years, and are the lowest in the Great Lakes region if I recall correctly. If you're going to do a first-generation bottle bill, the deposit probably needs to be a quarter and be indexed to stay relevant. But see below.

I think something that gets overlooked is that the reason the bottle bills are failing and we're fighting just to maintain some minimal level of recycling is that we stopped and never expanded the idea to provide for extended producer responsibility laws for all manufactured goods, such as Germany uses.

What we need is to move beyond just bottles and cans by requiring sellers (as the agents of the makers) to accept ALL plastics, metals, and glass (which, of course, includes bottles and cans) AND electronics and see that they are processed/reused/refurbished/recycled properly. We need to move as close as possible to a zero-waste society, and the easiest place to start is with consumer goods.

Another point that is often overlooked is that we let the plastics folks get away with murder with their pretend-recycling logos. What Oregon should pioneer is a law that makes the recycling logo meaningful again--i.e., if a retailer sells something with a recycling logo on it, it has to be accepted for recycling at that store or at a local materials reclamation center (within the same city or county). Otherwise the retailer has to put a sticker over the recycling logo and mark the non-recyclable status of the product on the shelf tag. Anyone who has tried to recycle #5 or #7 plastics knows that the recycle logo is BS most of the time.

This sort of corruption of the symbol is pernicious because it destroys the value of the logo, which was originally intended to help guide consumers. Now it has no value--virtually everything has a recycle logo, and much of it cannot be recycled.

Finally, it might be a good opportunity to rethink the whole deposit idea (but only as part of a comprehensive reform as outlined above)--the problem with bottle deposits is that they make doing the right thing a lot harder and more expensive than doing the wrong thing.

What we should be thinking about is ways to make doing the wrong thing--buying something in nonrecyclable packaging--more expensive in time and money than buying something in recyclable packaging. Right now, it's a lot more hassle to deal with the recyclables than the throwaways. I think that has to change.

Okay, I am going to get punched hard in the nose on this one and I know it.

We have a severe problem with street drinkers over in Hollywood. Their alcohol purchases are primarily fueled by the underground economy created by the bottle return system. As the supermarkets have installed the machines for bottle returns, many people opt to put their bottles, even the returnable ones, in their curbside recycling. On recycle nights you can hear the clatter of the shopping carts going up and down the street as the bottles are collected. The people collecting them are for the most part recognizable to me as neighborhood street drinkers. (I've been living where I am now for nearly 15 years).

All the products we are discussing here, as far as I know, are recyclable at the curbside. Glass bottles, plastic bottles with necks and cans. Why have a deposit system at all? Why not just continue to promote curbside recycling and continue to expand it. I would like to eliminate that underground economy fueling the street drinking in my neighborhood.

Okay, let me have it now.

Kari--

I agree with you on the handling fee. We already pay them money to deal with everything that comes with selling/handling the sodas, beer, etc. when we buy the items. Soda prices are considerably higher here in Oregon than they are in other areas of the country.

Back at home, we paid $2 or less for a 12-pack. Here, it runs $4+ regularly. I get excited when we can find it for $3.

Stores just want a handling fee so that they can add on the expenses of the bottle/can returns onto the can, and make more profit off the sodas/beer/wine coolers.

I can see upping the deposit to 10 cents. Anything higher than that, no. Raising it slowly would be fine. But jumping from 5 cents to a quarter -- no way. That would double the cost of a case of soda.

And not everyone has access to curb side recycling. I think those who live in areas like Portland forget that not everyone has access to the same services.

There are plenty of people who live in areas where it just isn't an option. Then there are those like me who live in apartment complexes that tend to have one large blue container for glass, one for aluminum, and one for plastic. That's it. For 300+ units, that isn't enough and they're full within a day.

Torridjoe, Thanks... I am just getting in shape for taking punches in the next campaign.

Actually, I got a good education about homelessness when I took a tour of the Good Sam emergency services the other day. They estimate that up to 80% of the homeless they serve regularly are chronically mentally ill. Coincidentally, they are the same folks that routinely self medicate with drugs and/or alcohol (i.e. street drinkers). I think the first step to solving homelessness is restoring our mental health services.

Please forgive the off topic post....

Torrid... Yep, still smoke free. Four and a half months now. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Man, I used to like Oregon's state mandated bottle return law when I was a kid. Back then I wasn't paying into the system, only reaping the profits for collecting others discarded beverage containers and redeeming them at the local grocery store. Now it's just another unnecessary pain in the arse. The containers accumulate in the garage, I grudgingly cart them to the store, hoping there's not a line at the counting machines, they're not full, in good working order, etc. Invariably there's a problem and somebody (usually me) shuffles into the store to alert an employee that one of more of their machines require immediate attention. I try not to think about just how unnecessary an annoyance this is, the inherent inefficiency of the process or how many hours of my time are wasted each year in the name of recycling some cans & bottles. Long gone are the days when I'd happily hand over my cache to the kid at the grocery store, do my shopping and collect a redemption slip before hitting the checkout line. That wasn't so bad, even though a few visitors from out-of-state looked at me like I was kinda funny. These days it's a pain and I understand those who avoid the hassle altogether (trash) or discard said containers to their curbside recycling bins. Personally, I'd rather do the same and reject the idea of quadrupling the deposit with a collection system so out of whack. Maybe it's just me.

I am all for redeption centers with one caveat - that we, the public, not be responsible to separate the returnables before we get to the centers. The redemption centers should have employees who not only calculate the money to be returned, but to also sort the containers after they are calculated and we have gone home with our return money. I get really fed up with recyclers who screech at me at high volumes for putting the wrong plastic in the wrong container to recycle. How is one to recyle if they get admonished for trying to do their part for the earth? If we had redemption centers with professional sorters in those centers, I would recyle more.

...and I agree with Joe12Pack as far as the "pain in the arse" recycling has become at retail stores. In fact, that's why I don't recyle much any more. All the machines they have are mostly not in working order, and they are all outside in the elements. I got tired of having to wait until the sun came out to do my recycling. I guess the retailers like trying to discouage us to redeem money.

Eric and 12 Pak make a good point with which I agree. I used to take my bottles into the store, drop them off at the backroom where a young worker, probably a high school student, would sort them and add them up and hand me a redemption chit. When they put in those terrible machines, where you could only feed one bottle at a time (I like beer in bottles rather than cans,) I determined that it was not worth my time. I used to just leave my bottles in a cart outside the store and let someone else have them. Later I started leaving them on my curb with the recycle.

Not to encourage another punch in the nose, but the installation of those machines... I wonder... another unintended consequence of Oregon's minimum wage?

Go ahead... hit me.

No, the machines aren't the consequence of a minimum wage, they're the intended consequence of a grocer's lobby that actively seeks to undermine recycling and to do everything possible to make recycling onerous at their stores, reducing the number of returned containers.

More than a minimum wage, the replace-people-with-machines is the consequence of a tax system that taxes labor instead of waste. In Oregon (and throughout the US) we tax what we WANT an economy to produce (jobs and investment) and we DON'T tax the things we don't want (waste and inefficiency). Then we use the income tax revenue (which hits working people the hardest) to pay for the cleanups needed because we made waste and pollution so economically rewarding.

It's like driving with your foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same time, and we do it throughout the tax code. It's a huge reason why our environmental challenges are so pervasive--because every single player in the system is rewarded for using energy-consuming machines and we all get to pollute for free, but if we want to hire someone to manage wastes we tax the pee out that decision (income taxes, payroll taxes, worker's comp, etc. etc.)

The solid waste problem is just a visible manifestation of a gene that's embedded in our whole system of taxation, a gene that expresses itself in very nasty ways.

Could JMG please provide some links to alternate tax policies and such? He mentioned something about Germany.

In the meantime, remember you can DONATE your returnables: take them to New Seasons for the Bottles-for-Books program.

As for the transients collecting returnables at curbside: well, they've got to eat, too, just and you and I. If we all shunned people who made bad life choices, we'd all be hermits.

I think Dave is right that we need to promote more curbside recycling, though I don't necessarily agree with the reasons he's stated for that. I guess the problem with promoting curbside recycling is for folks in more rural parts of Oregon and the logistics surrounding that.

We should be promoting recycling in every way we can.

Why not make it a quarter? Isn't the idea to create an incentive for people to recycle? 10 cents might be easy to throw away into the trash, but twenty-five cents can be less easy to throw in the trash. College students use quarters for laundry. Everyone uses them for parking meters downtown.

What's a dime for everyday use?

Googling "Germany extended producer responsibility" yields a good menu, including this good article:

http://www.informinc.org/eprenvman.php

Sorry, didn't see the other half of the query. For a great introduction to the idea of using the tax code to promote environmental progress rather than to retard it, see the SF based organization Redefining Progress (redefiningprogress.org).

They produced a terrific book in 1997 that I have referred to again and again and shared with many others; the title is "Tax Waste, Not Work" and you can read the introduction (by Paul Krugman) here:

http://www.redefiningprogress.org/newpubs/1997/twnw_intro.html

I believe it is still available for $15 from Redefining Progress. The whole concept of ecological tax shifting is one that merits more attention from progressives everywhere, but especially in the US where we have the greatest opportunity to make the biggest improvements with the least effort.

5 cents seems to be working, but I'm receptive to index based increases. All beverage containers should be deposit redeemable. In general use of plastics for food and beverage containers should be severely restricted. It's terrible that even Jack Daniels is sold in plastic these days.

The machines work pretty good out at the Beaverton Winco. Even employs a couple attendants. It does stink, but that situation could be addressed; better technology and janitorial practices.

I think its great that poor people are out gathering cans for a few bucks, even drunks perhaps. Maybe they could hook a breathalyzer up to those machines so you'd have to be sober to recycle. Life just gets more and more complicated.

Dave,

You said, "Okay, let me have it now."

I think that Torrid covered this...but I just have to say. How can anyone possibly be gearing up for a run at a major elected office and think that somehow eliminating deposits on drink containers would erase the issue of street drinkers and homelessness? Frankly, your take seems irresponsible.

For someone who doesn't shy at taking potshots at those in leadership your position is remarkably simplistic. I hope that before you consider running that you develop a platform that consists of more than sniping and soundbites. They might get you elected by the BoJack crowd but that's about it. And as much as the Bojackers consider themselves speaking for the vast majority, evidence suggests otherwise.

Why have a deposit system at all? Why not just continue to promote curbside recycling and continue to expand it.

I tend to agree with this idea.

It is a "pain in the arse" to deal with grocers' recycling machines. But I don't blame them -- it's a pain for them too, not to mention unsanitary. (Where do you think those cans/bottles are stored while awaiting the transportation? In back... right along with their backstock of food.)

There is one rather innovative curbside recyling program called RecycleBank (recyclebank.com), which was initially tested in Philadelphia (which allegedly went from a 6% recycling rate to 90%). There is a story about it here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006-10-01/. Any thoughts on such a proposal?

Thank you for the excellent pointer to the cool video on recycling. The company mentioned, Cascade Engineering, is an awesome place. They have spent a LOT of money to reduce their ecological footprint, reducing energy use, water use, pollution, etc. They are as close to the model for Natural Capitalism as I have seen in what is typically an environmentally unconscious sector, plastics manufacturing. They are constantly looking for ways to leave petroleum-based plastics entirely. If there were more Fred Kellers, we would be better off.

Hawthorne,

I was suggesting that our bottle deposit system is an enabling device with the mentally ill on the street who self-medicate with alcohol.

My approach would be a coupling of the restoration of our mental heath services with an elimination of bottle deposits.

If all we are accomplishing by putting our bottles on the curb is to make ourselves feel good about recycling but at the same time enabling ill people to stay drunk then I say we are not doing right by them.

And I really believe that since the supermarkets made the decision to make it more difficult to redeem our bottles and cans that is precisely what is happening.

Maybe your neighborhood is different than mine, but in mine most of the bottles are left at curbside and picked up by folks who redeem them to buy alcohol but are actually people in need of help.

I guess if you figure that position makes me unworthy of your vote in some future election, then don't vote for me.

Some questions for Mr. Lister:

I also live in Portland's Hollywood District and see people scrounging for returnables. Do you actually follow the scroungers to the Hollywood Fred Meyer to see how they spend the nickels they collect for those bottles and cans? Did you ever think about the effective hourly wage those scroungers are making?

When I toss those returnables into the recycling, it's NOT so that they can be scrounged; it's so that they get recycled one way or another. What do you suppose happens to the returnables after they get crunched?

If you really don't want to queue up at those refund machines, but don't want to put your returnables at curbside, then drop them at a Bottles for Books donation site!

One difference between us, apparently, is that I don't pass judgment on the scroungers. What I feel when I see the scroungers is more in the way of sorrow. Some people would put it as "there but for the grace of God go I." If you meet anyone without faults and weaknesses, by all means promote him or her for Universal Benevolent Ruler, cuz folks like this only come along every millenia or so.

Dave,

You said, "I was suggesting that our bottle deposit system is an enabling device with the mentally ill on the street who self-medicate with alcohol." With this logic do you support the elimination of freeway off ramps as well? They seem to be enabling devices as well judging from how many people stand there asking for money.

Of course, I agree with the comment above. I actually talk to the people in my neighborhood who pick up cans and bottles. They can not be as easily categorized and frankly would be insulted by your point of view. Do some of them have issues with alcohol? Sure. The same is true across society.

The real issue is that refunds have not kept up with inflation. Why do so many people put their cans out on the street? Because it's not worth the time cost of taking them back. Up the price and I have no doubt that people (including myself) will bring them in.

"We have a severe problem with street drinkers over in Hollywood. Their alcohol purchases are primarily fueled by the underground economy created by the bottle return system. As the supermarkets have installed the machines for bottle returns, many people opt to put their bottles, even the returnable ones, in their curbside recycling. On recycle nights you can hear the clatter of the shopping carts going up and down the street as the bottles are collected. The people collecting them are for the most part recognizable to me as neighborhood street drinkers. (I've been living where I am now for nearly 15 years)." Dave Lister

Gee,if nothing else, that's certainly funny reading.."...the clatter of the shopping carts going up and down the street...". Almost poetic. Dave, in the 15 years you've lived there, have you ever managed to get an estimation of how many shopping cart pushing bottle redeeming street drinkers are populating the Hollywood district? What kind of numbers are we talking about here....5 or 15 or 50 ? More?

I don't buy the claim that the bottle deposit system enables street drinking, at least not unreasonably so. Chasing down all those cans seems like work to me. At least they're willing to work for their booze. I actually have a friend whose friend is one of those guys who does exactly what you describe. Homeless, gathers cans, gets drunk. But so what? There's easier ways to get drunk, even for a homeles street person. I figure if this "...underground economy..." is enabling anything, it's enabling, or rather nurturing a disposition to work. That's an accomplishment worth noting.

You know, maybe I'm just amazingly technologically gifted or something, but I don't find the bottle/can machines that onerous. In the past five years, they've gotten good enough that they can read and process even cans that got crunched underfoot in my car. And in that time I've only twice had to walk away with containers that were rejected for any reason except not being sold at that store.

Your mileage, apparently, varies.

And in general I'm all for militant protection of honest labor against soulless mechanization -- but honestly, I was completely unable to turn in the containers the old way (track through the store with my bags, wait at the appointed place until an employee wandered by, inform that employee that I had containers to return, wait while that employee summoned a lower-caste employee...)

Maybe it's 'cause I'm short, but I could never get my nose high enough in the air to say, "Hyear, boy! Take this filthy refuse I generated and use your hands to process it with care and precision whilst I saunter off amongst the clean consumer baubles that are worthy of my attention! When I find it convenient to return, be sure to be waiting with a petit cadeau to thank me for my generosity and condescension in bringing you this opportunity!"

Bleeecchhh. Nope, I couldn't do it.

Back in those days, I always left my cans on bus benches, and hoped some homeless person got a kick out of both the nickel and the service.

Unless the matter of redemption is addressed in a meaningful way, any changes to the bottle deposit program are pointless.

It seems like area grocers go out of their way to make redemption as difficult of a process as possible placing redemption machines in dark corners of parking lots or unsecured areas behind stores. The majority of the time I've actually gone to redeem bottles or cans, I've found the machines not working and almost always covered in the sticky residue of left over beverages in containers attracting bees and other insects.

Lines at redemption machines don't bother me as long as the machines are kept in working order, placed in more secure locations, and the area clean. So far, I've not seen a very good job of this done.

Chuck - they ARE going out of thier way to make it difficult because they are inherently lazy and would rather have their minions stock shelves than give refunds. Years ago these people went whining like spoiled 6-year olds to the legislature complaining about how it was imposing on their business to handle the cans and bottles - that is why there is a limit on cans and bottles at 144 per day. Along with that, they got permission to send the activities outside the store so that they wouldn't have to be reminded about it (out of sight - out of mind). All the grocers want to do is sell - not refund. That is why we need redemption centers and fill those centers with employees who care about recycling rather than profits.