Tennessee’s proposed “bottle bill” gets its first hearing with state legislators today, but Rep. Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol, said Monday he won’t put a cork in his opposition to the proposal, which would place a 5-cent deposit on beverage containers.
“I have yet to hear a good rationale for why we need it,” Lundberg said Monday of the proposed Tennessee Beverage Container Recycling Act, which goes before the House’s State Government Subcommittee this afternoon.
“If the main rationale is that this is a way to reduce litter, then let’s look at our litter laws,” Lundberg said of the 5-cent deposit. “But I don’t think another tax is the answer, and that’s what this is. It’s a tax for the state.”
Currently, 11 states – including New York, Michigan, Massachusetts and California – have deposit fees on recyclable beverage containers.
Under Tennessee’s proposal, residents could take glass, plastic and aluminum beverage containers to 500 “redemption centers” across the state, and get back the deposit paid when they bought each container.
The plan has numerous sponsors in the state legislature, led by Rep. Mike McDonald, D-Portland, and Sen. Doug Jackson, D-Dickson.
While the deposit fee wouldn’t actually start until April 2012 at the earliest, the bottle bill’s supporters hope today’s subcommittee hearing would begin the political process to make it a law before this year ends.
If that happens, the state could use all of 2011 to set up redemption centers and prepare the public for the deposit fee’s launch. That time would be valuable in educating residents on all the ways the bottle-bill program would help Tennessee, said Maggie Davis, coordinator for Pride of Place, a state environmental group backing the idea.
“It will create jobs, it’ll reduce costs for businesses that can use recyclable materials and it’ll do more for litter control in Tennessee than anything else,” Davis said. “So we really need to become the 12th state with a bottle bill.”
Davis said many of the 500 planned redemption centers would be run by small businesses and non-profit groups that could earn as much as $200,000 a year by selling the recyclable containers to scrap buyers – and earning part of the profit from unclaimed deposits.
“Right now, about 10 to 20 percent of recyclable containers are being recycled,” Davis said. “With the bottle bill, that would likely be 80 to 85 percent. The 5-cent deposit wouldn’t deter people or raise beverage fees. In fact, the opposite might be true.”
Davis noted that last fall, she was in a national chain store in Maine, which has a bottle bill, and saw a 12-pack of Pepsi priced at $1.98. Shortly afterward, she saw a similar Pepsi 12-pack in Tennessee – in the same chain store – priced at $4.67, she said.
“It just makes sense to have a bottle bill,” Davis said.
rbrown@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2512
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