A Bottle Bill for Maryland?

Balmer Sun, After 3 tries in Maryland, bottle bill backers hope to pass plastic refund program

Ten states across the country have already implemented bottle bills, with Oregon becoming the first in 1971. But Maryland is not one of them.

Democratic lawmakers, backed by Sierra Club members from Central Maryland, have tried to get the bill passed in Maryland three times already, only to see it get stuck in committee and not face a vote. This year, local activists are hoping that a renewed push — and growing attention on the dangers of microplastics — will help the bill finally succeed. Del. Jen Terrasa from Howard County and Sen. Ben Brooks from Baltimore County are slated as sponsors of the bottle bill for the 2026 legislative session.

 

“The counties and states have limited budgets for picking up litter, and they are actually quite dependent on volunteers, but there are only so many of us,” said Kerri Hesley, chair of the Catoctin Group. “We feel like this is the better way to make this a valuable resource. So people have an incentive not to litter, and if someone does litter, another person has an incentive to pick it up.”

According to the version of the bill introduced in the General Assembly last year, Maryland sells 5.5 billion single-use plastic beverage containers each year. In a recent letter sent in support of a proposed state law that would allow Prince George’s County residents to report others for littering or illegal dumping, the State Highway Administration noted that Maryland spent $15 million in fiscal year 2023 on litter cleanup.

 How much of that was plastic bottles?

Bottle bills in the U.S. and similar deposit return systems in Europe and Australia have cut litter by 50% on average, according to a study by the nonprofit Reloop. And a recent survey commissioned by the Sierra Club found that over 90% of respondents supported the bottle bill.

Still, the initiative has struggled to get off the ground in Annapolis. Rubenstein, who lives in Carroll County, said she spoke with Carroll Del. April Rose, a Republican who serves on the Economic Matters Committee that oversaw the bottle bill the past few years. The bill got a hearing in the Environment and Transportation Committee last year, but not in Economic Matters, and failed to advance out of either, replicating a yearslong pattern.

According to the fiscal note that accompanied last year’s bottle bill, the program would essentially pay for itself, since revenue would offset any operating costs over the next five fiscal years. But the analysis determined that the Bottle Bill could impact small businesses and small container manufacturers, which might incur costs from joining the program and would have to front the cost of the beverage deposit.

We lived under a bottle bill in Oregon, and while it was  a hassle, you got used to it. But IIRC, that was only glass bottles, beer and soda mostly. Will the bottles really be recycled, or will they just end up being shipped to China or India for disposal.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Hello, Nurse! up and garnering clicks at The Other McCain.

Palm Sunday

 With Athena Kuhn. Considering she's in Miami, I expected more:

The Cool Down, Researchers develop game-changing method to transform palm trees into futuristic building blocks — here's how it works

A new biocomposite made up of desert palm waste has just been developed out of the United Arab Emirates, according to Construction Week Online.

The UAE produces 500,000 tons of palm waste annually, and researchers at the Technology Innovation Institute are using it to produce a material called Eco-Wall.

According to the researchers, Eco-Wall is a sustainable building material that can be endlessly shaped into everything from tiles and flooring to full-scale facades. It can be added to existing buildings or used in new construction.

Incredibly, it is said to be three times stronger in compression and uses seven times less water than cement. And since all it requires is palm waste to create, it can basically be created locally around the world.

When life gives you lemon trees. . .

Linked at the Pirate's Cove in the weekly Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup and links. The Wombat has Rule Five Sunday: All-American Girl up on time and under budget at The Other McCain.

Maryland, My Maryland

Chesapeake Bay Mag, Could MD Bottle Trade-In Bill Help Solve Plastic Pollution Problem?

Readers of a certain age might remember something called “deposit bottles,” those soft drink bottles you could take back to the store after you’ve emptied them and get a few cents back. They could be coming back thanks to a pair of bills working their way through the Maryland General Assembly.

Known as the Maryland Bottle Bill, it would lead to deposit fees of 10 cents on bottles of 24 ounces or less and 15 cents on larger bottles. The idea is to sharply reduce the amount of pollution from plastic bottles, reduce litter and at the same time encourage recycling in the state.

More than half the trash in the Anacostia River and Baltimore Harbor, two Chesapeake Bay tributaries that have been declared impaired by the Environmental Protection Agency, comes from discarded bottles, said state Sen. Benjamin Brooks, a Baltimore County Democrat and lead sponsor of the Senate version of the bill.

“Litter floating down our waterways is contributing to a plastic pollution crisis,” he told the Senate Education, Energy and Environment Committee during a hearing last Wednesday (March 5). Meg: Do you want to say last week? Not sure how you want to do the time element.

Most of the bottles that wash up seem to come of the streets from stormwater runoff. If the cities would control their stormwater this would also be significantly reduced.  

“Maryland,” he said, “has a beverage container and plastic pollution crisis and a bottle bill is proven to solve that problem. It has the potential to transform our state and reduce cost to local government.”

Christopher Williams, of the Anacostia Watershed Society, said the plastic “pollutes public spaces and fouls wildlife habitat, interfering with foraging, feeding and other behaviors.” And studies have found that microplastics, created when plastic bottles decompose, damage reproductive systems in sea life and harm humans.

My goodness, what a hassle that would be for both consumers and retailers. Theoretically, but not really practically, all these plastic bottles are recyclable, and hardly anybody recycles them. And a dime isn't worth what it used to be in the good old days before Bidenflation, and it's dubious that it would produce a significant rate of return. 

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Sleeping In ready as usual at The one and only Other McCain.

A Whole New Level of Scrapping

Bespokoyny

Russian Navy Commander Stole Two 13-Ton Bronze Propellers From His Own Destroyer

The Russian Navy says that a former commander of the now-decommissioned Sovremenny class destroyer Bespokoynyy conspired with others and stole the ship's two bronze propellers while it was in dry dock being converted into a floating museum. The alleged caper sounds like it was ripped straight from the plot of a comedic Hollywood heist movie, with the thieves reportedly swapping out the pair of screws, each weighing approximately 13 tons, for ones made out of a cheaper metal.

Russian media outlet Interfax reported on Jan. 11, 2021, that Sergei Sharshavykh, head of the military investigation department of the Russian Navy's Baltic Fleet, confirmed that the investigation into the theft was nearly complete. The names of the former commander of the Bespokoynyy, or any of their accomplices, and what kind of jail time or fines they might be facing, were not disclosed. The two propellers are valued at approximately 39 million rubles, or just over $522,513 at the rate of exchange at the time of writing.

Sharshavykh, the Russian Navy investigator told Interfax that, to "cover their tracks," those involved in the theft had imitation screws made up, the "cost and quality of which are several times lower" than the original bronze ones.

On the other hand.

It's unclear when the theft took place, but Sharshavykh said that happened after Bespokoynyy arrived at Yantar in 2016 for conversion into a museum ship as part of its decommissioning from the Russian Navy. That process included remove the destroyer's two propellers, as well as its driveshafts, and sealing the hull in such a way as to allow it to remain afloat, but without the need for regular maintenance.

So at least no sailor were endangered.  

 

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

The Remains of Holly Maddux discovered
 in a trunk encased in stryform

Hey kids, it's "Earth Day"From Ed Driscoll at Instapundit: NBC: EARTH DAY LEADER KILLED, COMPOSTED GIRLFRIEND. That's one way to do it.

Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the "composted" body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk.

A self-proclaimed environmental activist, Einhorn made a name for himself among ecological groups during the 1960s and '70s by taking on the role of a tie-dye-wearing ecological guru and Philadelphia’s head hippie. With his long beard and gap-toothed smile, Einhorn — who nicknamed himself "Unicorn" because his German-Jewish last name translates to "one horn" —advocated flower power, peace and free love to his fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania. He also claimed to have helped found Earth Day.

But the charismatic spokesman who helped bring awareness to environmental issues and preached against the Vietnam War — and any violence — had a secret dark side. When his girlfriend of five years, Helen "Holly" Maddux, moved to New York and broke up with him, Einhorn threatened that he would throw her left-behind personal belongings onto the street if she didn't come back to pick them up.

Every day is "Earth Day" in North Korea!

And so on Sept. 9, 1977, Maddux went back to the apartment that she and Einhorn had shared in Philadelphia to collect her things, and was never seen again. When Philadelphia police questioned Einhorn about her mysterious disappearance several weeks later, he claimed that she had gone out to the neighborhood co-op to buy some tofu and sprouts and never returned.

It wasn't until 18 months later that investigators searched Einhorn's apartment after one of his neighbors complained that a reddish-brown, foul-smelling liquid was leaking from the ceiling directly below Einhorn's bedroom closet. Inside the closet, police found Maddux's beaten and partially mummified body stuffed into a trunk that had also been packed with Styrofoam, air fresheners and newspapers.

After his arrest, Einhorn jumped bail and spent decades evading authorities by hiding out in Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and France. After 23 years, he was finally extradited to the United States from France and put on trial. Taking the stand in his own defense, Einhorn claimed that his ex-girlfriend had been killed by CIA agents who framed him for the crime because he knew too much about the agency's paranormal military research. He was convicted of murdering Maddux and is currently serving a life sentence.

Also from Ed Driscoll this timely checklist of Earth Day predictions from 1970:

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”-  Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” - George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” - Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” - New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” - Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” -  Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.” -  Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” -  Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” - Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” - Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.” - Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.'” - Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” - Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” - Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Keep these predictions in mind when you hear the same predictions made today. They’ve been making the same predictions for 39 years. And they’re going to continue making them until…well…forever.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Even NPR questions, Are Plastic Bag Bans Garbage?

University of Sydney economist Rebecca Taylor started studying bag regulations because it seemed as though every time she moved for a new job — from Washington, D.C., to California to Australia — bag restrictions were implemented shortly after. "Yeah, these policies might be following me," she jokes. Taylor recently published a study of bag regulations in California. It's a classic tale of unintended consequences.

Before California banned plastic shopping bags statewide in late 2016, a wave of 139 California cities and counties implemented the policy themselves. Taylor and colleagues compared bag use in cities with bans with those without them. For six months, they spent weekends in grocery stores tallying the types of bags people carried out (she admits these weren't her wildest weekends). She also analyzed these stores' sales data.

 Ah yes, the life of a grad student. "Bright college days, oh carefree days that fly. To thee we sing, with our glasses raised on high (hic!)"

Taylor found these bag bans did what they were supposed to: People in the cities with the bans used fewer plastic bags, which led to about 40 million fewer pounds of plastic trash per year. But people who used to reuse their shopping bags for other purposes, like picking up dog poop or lining trash bins, still needed bags. "What I found was that sales of garbage bags actually skyrocketed after plastic grocery bags were banned," she says. This was particularly the case for small, 4-gallon bags, which saw a 120 percent increase in sales after bans went into effect.

Trash bags are thick and use more plastic than typical shopping bags. "So about 30 percent of the plastic that was eliminated by the ban comes back in the form of thicker garbage bags," Taylor says. On top of that, cities that banned plastic bags saw a surge in the use of paper bags, which she estimates resulted in about 80 million pounds of extra paper trash per year.

Plastic haters, it's time to brace yourselves. A bunch of studies find that paper bags are actually worse for the environment. They require cutting down and processing trees, which involves lots of water, toxic chemicals, fuel and heavy machinery. While paper is biodegradable and avoids some of the problems of plastic, Taylor says, the huge increase of paper, together with the uptick in plastic trash bags, means banning plastic shopping bags increases greenhouse gas emissions. That said, these bans do reduce nonbiodegradable litter.

What about reusable cloth bags? We know die-hard public radio fans love them! They've got to be great, right? Nope. They can be even worse.

A 2011 study by the U.K. government found a person would have to reuse a cotton tote bag 131 times before it was better for climate change than using a plastic grocery bag once. The Danish government recently did a study that took into account environmental impacts beyond simply greenhouse gas emissions, including water use, damage to ecosystems and air pollution. These factors make cloth bags even worse. They estimate you would have to use an organic cotton bag 20,000 times more than a plastic grocery bag to make using it better for the environment.

That said, the Danish government's estimate doesn't take into account the effects of bags littering land and sea, where plastic is clearly the worst offender.

The most environment-friendly way to carry groceries is to use the same bag over and over again. According to the Danish study, the best reusable ones are made from polyester or plastics like polypropylene. Those still have to be used dozens and dozens of times to be greener than plastic grocery bags, which have the smallest carbon footprint for a single use.

As for bag policies, Taylor says a fee is smarter than a ban. She has a second paper showing a small fee for bags is just as effective as a ban when it comes to encouraging use of reusable bags. But a fee offers flexibility for people who reuse plastic bags for garbage disposal or dog walking.

Taylor believes the recent legislation passed in New York is a bad version of the policy. It bans only plastic bags and gives free rein to using paper ones (counties have the option to impose a 5-cent fee on them). Taylor is concerned this will drive up paper use. The best policy, Taylor says, imposes a fee on both paper and plastic bags and encourages reuse.

What could be more appropriate on Palm Sunday?

Plastic bag bans are virtue signalling by jurisdictions. Bag bans should be banned in the name of freedom, as should Straw Bans. Courtesy of Teach at Pirate's Cove, I see that my beloved Oregon has fallen for the Straw Ban: Having Solved All Of Oregon’s Problems, Senate Passes Bill Limiting Straws

Plastic pollution is not a joke. Even with the notion that the majority these days comes from China and India, each of us can do our part. It doesn’t have to be about ‘climate change’, or even extreme enviroweenieism. Seriously, do you like driving around, going for a walk, riding a bike, going to beach or the mountains or the park and seeing garbage, much of which is plastic? But, should Government be dictating choice?

Elle Johnson would give up her bikini before her straw

Oregon Senate passes bill limiting plastic straws

Oregon’s Senate passed a law Thursday to limit the use of plastic straws.
SB 90, approved by a 23-6 vote, would prohibit single-use plastic straws at restaurants unless a customer asks for one. Drive-thrus would still be able to hand out plastic straws.
In a press release, Oregon Democrats highlighted the environmental risks of plastic straws.
“We use a straw for less than an hour, but it continues to exist in nature for longer than our lifetime,” said state Sen. Michael Dembrow (D), who introduced the bill on the Senate floor.

“We can use a straw, throw it away and forget about it as an inconsequential part of our lives. But that straw can easily end up in the ocean or somewhere else in nature. There, a single straw can have significant and sometimes deadly impacts on animals. The viral video of a turtle having a straw painfully removed from its nostril provides clear evidence that our seemingly inconsequential acts have significant consequences for other creatures.”

Brooke gave up fishing, but not palms and straws

I’m not going to disagree with Dembrow’s assessment. This doesn’t have to be a political issue in terms of reducing plastic pollution. But, again, should government be passing laws like this? For one thing, there really is no enforcement mechanism. Does anyone think a cop will go in to get a burger and give a ticket when they are given a straw? Heck, most places do not hand you a straw, they have a big container with them. Something like this would be better as a resolution which asks places with straws to limit their use and replace them mostly with recyclables, paper straws, and recycle containers for plastic straws, many of which are stirrers for coffee.
Because, really, Oregon has a few more important issues, such as the quick rising homeless problem, used syringes all over the streets in cities like Portland, and rising crime.

And from Watt's Up With That: Climate Friendly Plastic Recycling is a Total Con

60 Minutes: Australia’s recycling industry now ‘mostly a con’ after China closes doors to plastic waste

By Sammi Taylor • 60 Minutes Digital Producer Apr 14, 2019

Most Australians think they’re doing the right thing when they take their recycling bins to the curb every fortnight.

But our belief that we’re doing our part for the environment is somewhat misguided: Australia’s plastic recycling industry is largely a con.

 “When you throw this stuff in your recycle bin at home you might like to think again,” Bartlett says.

Australia alone has dumped more than 71,000 tonnes of plastic in Malaysia in the past 12 months.

But there, the mountains of plastic waste can often end up in illegal processing facilities and junkyards.

It’s a big problem – and many players within the recycling industry are calling it for what it is: a load of rubbish.
…
Read more: https://www.9news.com.au/national/60-minutes-recycling-plastic-waste-australia-china-malaysia/9cb9fb9f-09ab-4c34-8be0-dcc7d996bcab

It's true in the United States too.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Aisha Tyler awaiting your digital pleasure.

Baltimore to Ban Styrofoam?

Baltimore City Council Moves Styrofoam Ban Forward

The Baltimore City Council has moved a bill forward that would ban plastic foam containers for carryout food and drinks — a measure that Mayor Catherine Pugh has supported.

Our media partner The Baltimore Sun reports a vote Monday night unanimously gave preliminary approval to the bill. The ban aims to cut down on litter in the city.

The bill would create criminal fines for businesses that fail to comply with the ban on containers made of polystyrene foam, a substance more commonly known by its brand name, Styrofoam.

Styrofoam has long been used as an inexpensive convenience, but it isn’t free of other costs. It’s a major source of Baltimore’s litter, with much of it washing off streets and alleys and into the Inner Harbor and the Chesapeake Bay. And it isn’t cheap to recycle.

Mercedes Thompson, a student organizer at a rally at Baltimore City Hall in support of the bill earlier this month, said “Styrofoam is recyclable, but it’s extremely difficult.”

I thought difficult was the point of recycling; certainly it isn't mostly about the planet.



I wonder if this ban extends to structural and other major uses of styrofoam as insulation?

Is Recycling Worth the Effort?

It's complicated. A surprisingly even-handed article from the New York Times: The Reign of Recycling

If you live in the United States, you probably do some form of recycling. It’s likely that you separate paper from plastic and glass and metal. You rinse the bottles and cans, and you might put food scraps in a container destined for a composting facility. As you sort everything into the right bins, you probably assume that recycling is helping your community and protecting the environment. But is it? Are you in fact wasting your time?
. . .
Here’s some perspective: To offset the greenhouse impact of one passenger’s round-trip flight between New York and London, you’d have to recycle roughly 40,000 plastic bottles, assuming you fly coach. If you sit in business- or first-class, where each passenger takes up more space, it could be more like 100,000.

Even those statistics might be misleading. New York and other cities instruct people to rinse the bottles before putting them in the recycling bin, but the E.P.A.’s life-cycle calculation doesn’t take that water into account. That single omission can make a big difference, according to Chris Goodall, the author of “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life.” Mr. Goodall calculates that if you wash plastic in water that was heated by coal-derived electricity, then the net effect of your recycling could be more carbon in the atmosphere.

That alone should tell you how precarious the balance between worthwhile and worthless is.

The national rate of recycling rose during the 1990s to 25 percent, meeting the goal set by an E.P.A. official, J. Winston Porter. He advised state officials that no more than about 35 percent of the nation’s trash was worth recycling, but some ignored him and set goals of 50 percent and higher. Most of those goals were never met and the national rate has been stuck around 34 percent in recent years.
. . .
Then why do so many public officials keep vowing to do more of it? Special-interest politics is one reason — pressure from green groups — but it’s also because recycling intuitively appeals to many voters: It makes people feel virtuous, especially affluent people who feel guilty about their enormous environmental footprint. It is less an ethical activity than a religious ritual, like the ones performed by Catholics to obtain indulgences for their sins.

Religious rituals don’t need any practical justification for the believers who perform them voluntarily. But many recyclers want more than just the freedom to practice their religion. They want to make these rituals mandatory for everyone else, too, with stiff fines for sinners who don’t sort properly. Seattle has become so aggressive that the city is being sued by residents who maintain that the inspectors rooting through their trash are violating their constitutional right to privacy.

The recycling program in Calvert County here is pretty strong. You can take any paper, cans, bottles and plastics to the local transfer station for recycling. They also have provisions for motor oil, fluorescent lights, electronics, and bulk metal. I would estimate we recycle about 75% of our trash by weight (with most of the weight being paper, and most of that, the Washington Post). We compost our own lawn and garden waste (if throwing it onto a huge heap until it decomposes counts for the big stuff). We have on one occasion actually taken a load of metal to the metal recycling plant, and made $11, most of which was for a bucket of lead containing wheel weights and old fishing lures.

A "Bottle Bill" for Maryland?

Remember to save that can!

Proposed Md. bill calls for 5-cent bottle deposit

A "bottle bill," to be introduced in the General Assembly this week, could mean 5-cents back in consumers' pockets for each can or bottle they recycle in Maryland.  The Maryland Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG, delivered 7,500 signed petitions to Gov. Martin O'Malley's desk Monday in support of the bill.  "With the bottle bill, Maryland has the opportunity to get to an achievable goal of 80 percent container recycling by 2020," says Joanna Guy with PIRG.

Gov. O'Malley included increasing container recycling in his Climate Change Plan released in the summer of 2014. Proponents say if implemented, it will triple what the state is recycling now.

Almost $1.00 worth!

"Proponents" tend to exaggerate in support of their programs.  I find this hard to believe.

Under the proposed program, consumers would bring their bottles and cans to deposit spots, likely at grocery stores, and redeem their money there. The locations of the deposit spots are still unknown.

Right now, we have "free" recycling at county waste sites.  All cans, bottles and miscellaneous plastic and metal can be dumped in a common bin, and sorted later.  We make that minor effort routinely.  Like most of our semirural neighbors, we take our own trash to a central site rather than having a trash service pick it up, but even if we did use one of the several private trash haulers, they would accept and sort the recyclable material.

Under the new system, we will pay extra up front for the bottles and cans, have to keep those separate, (just what the garage needs, another trash recycling bin), and return them to the grocery store to get a few cents back.

"It's good for the state for many reasons. We recycle 22 percent of cans and bottles a year. That's four billion pieces of trash, three billion of which end up in the Bay in rivers and streams. It's a huge waste of money and a problem for the environment, says state Sen. Brian Frosh, D-Montgomery County.

Huh?  You really think that if 4 billion cans and bottles are created, and only 1 billion recycled, 100% (or near enough) of the remainder end up in the Bay and streams?

I have to say, although cans and bottle do wash up on the beach after a big storm, they do not form a majority, or even a significant fraction of the trash.

Frosh is introducing the bill whose only opponents are the beverage companies. He says that's because it's a win-win for the state, and its counties in particular.

"The counties will not only get the value of the raw materials recycled, but will get the redemption fee," he says.  That means that consumers who choose to recycle bottles and cans at the curb will relinquish their five cents per bottle to their respective county. "Any unredeemed deposits would go to recycling programs and expanding those recycling programs," Guy says.

So there's the real agenda.  It's a hidden tax, that you only pay if you're lazy.

I've lived in other states with and without a "bottle bill."  Oregon was not particularly cleaner as a result of having a bottle bill, back when a nickel was worth a lot more than it is now.

One good thing about it though, is there's no excuse for poverty; any poor person should be able to make a living pouring through trash, or even picking up streets after careless teenagers.  For that, I might even stop recycling my bottles and cans and throw them out on the street for them to glean.

Wombat-socho has the great collection for the week, "Rule 5 Sunday: All Hail The Superb Owl!" up at The Other McCain.

A Bottle Bill for Maryland?

New Bill Will Pay Marylanders To Recycle

Making money off that empty beer can or soda bottle. That’s the incentive backers of a nickel deposit bill hope will pay off in a new state law and a cleaner Maryland.

Alex DeMetrick reports it first means paying a nickel more per container.

Right now when Marylander’s recycle cans and bottles, there is no monetary reward.

But there is the knowledge that what’s recycled isn’t going out with the trash into landfills–or worse, back under our noses as litter, much of it floating into the harbor and bay.

There you have it, the reason this turned up in the daily Bay News feed.  It's a flimsy excuse, but sufficient.

But if you could get a nickel back for each of those containers, after first making a nickel deposit, you’d get money back.

And Maryland could make up to $200 million dollars a year selling a lot more recyclable aluminum, plastic and glass.

I've lived is states with and without a "Bottle Bill".  Oregon had a "Bottle Bill" but not a "Can Bill".  And back in those days, most bottles were still glass, and dragging them back to the stores to get our money back, was a hassle, but not an impossible one.  I imagine it's worse of the stores, who have to deal will saving and storing the old stinky cans and bottles until the next collection step.

In Maryland, of course, we live without one, and we fairly religiously recycle all our bottles and cans and miscellaneous other containers at the the local transfer station.  It's not a lot of work, and there's no counting or money changing hands.  It works fine for me; it's only a little more onerous than putting everything in the trash.  But apparently we're not normal:

In Maryland, 4 billion beverage containers are sold every year. But only 22-percent are recycled... Ten states currently have container deposit laws. They average a 76 percent rate for recycling cans and bottles.

But, of course, the whiny old capitalists are resisting the attempts of the realists to make them do more work for less reward:

But while the environment might benefit, not everyone sees a nickel deposit as a winner.

“A deposit will add to the cost of beverages in grocery stores and food retailers across the state,” said Rob Stantoni, Santoni Super Market.

That would mean fewer sales, but deposit backers say stores could still make money.

“They can actually get money out of this by acting as reclamation center themselves,” McIntosh said.

By collecting a handling fee, provided there’s room to store what’s headed for the recycling center.

Perhaps if they were allowed to collect the nickel up front, and keep the profit for unclaimed cans and bottles, they be more favorably disposed.  But of course, that's not the plan; the plan is for any "extra" money to go back to the government:

Funds from that container deposit would benefit Maryland counties, as well as the city of Baltimore, as well as statewide programs,” said Del. Maggie McIntosh, D-District 43.

And now a word from Penn and Teller on recycling...



Part 2,  Part 3, Remember, if they're not paying you to take it away, it's not recycling.