PROVIDENCE – For the City of Providence, a bottle bill is not just about improving the recycling system and helping the environment. The creation of a redemption program for used beverage containers would also benefit municipal finances.
So said Priscilla De La Cruz, sustainability director for the city, at a Senate committee hearing May 7 on legislation that would require a 10-cent deposit on drinks sold in bottles, cans and other recyclable packaging that would be refunded when the empty containers are returned to a redemption center.
That’s because curbside recycling loads picked up in Providence are notorious for the amount of other garbage they contain. These so-called contaminated loads are regularly turned away from the state’s recycling facility in Johnston and disposed of in the Central Landfill next door, forcing additional tipping fees on the city to the tune of $2 million a year, said De La Cruz.
Bill McCusker, president of Friends of the Saugatucket, dumps a load of nip bottles to be bagged and recycled.
By channeling bottles, cans and plastics out of the state’s struggling waste system and into a new recycling stream, it would reduce the trash tonnage landfilled by Providence and save the city more than $615,000 annually on tipping fees, De La Cruz said.
It’s why Providence Mayor Brett Smiley supports a bottle bill and so does the Providence City Council.
“It does impact our taxpayers,” De La Cruz said. “It does impact our residents when we have poor recycling.”
Legislation under consideration to improve recycling in RI
The Senate Committee on Environment and Agriculture heard two pieces of legislation aimed at improving the recycling system in Rhode Island. One, introduced by Sen. Bridget Valverde, has the sole aim of setting up a beverage container redemption program, similar to what’s been around in Connecticut, Massachusetts and many other states for decades.
The other, sponsored by Sen. Mark McKenney, would do the same but would also go further by targeting paper, cardboard and other packaging materials as part of an “extended producer responsibility” program. Both components would see industry members taking responsibility for the waste they create.
Something needs to be done to fix the curbside recycling program in Rhode Island, said McKenney, who was the co-chair of a legislative commission that spent a year and a half looking at ways to reduce plastic waste.
“Possibly as little as 14% of what we put into the bins every week and roll out actually gets recycled,” he said.
But just as De La Cruz highlighted the financial impact of a bottle bill, so too did opponents, though they presented it as detrimental to the bottom line for Rhode Islanders.
Opponents of a bottle bill call it a tax
Representatives of liquor stores and beverage companies like Coca-Cola went before the committee to argue that the 10-cent deposit on beverages will act more like a tax because many consumers will simply toss their empty containers away rather than taking them to a redemption center for a refund.
And while some people will choose not to because it’s a “massive inconvenience,” others won’t be able to, said Nick Fede Jr., director of the Rhode Island Liquor Operators Collaborative.
“People that are disabled are unable to do it. People without vehicles are unable to do it,” he said. “It is a punch-down tax on the lower class.”
He and others in the beverage and retail industries said the answer is to channel more money into the existing recycling system to improve how material is sorted so that contaminated recycling loads aren’t simply landfilled, and to spend more on public education.
They say there’s an existing funding stream – a beverage container tax of 8-cents-per-case paid by wholesalers – that could be earmarked for recycling improvements rather than going into the state’s general fund.
Environmental groups say action needed on plastics and other litter
But those on the opposite side of the debate expressed doubts about the beverage industry’s commitment to cleaning up its waste.
“They don’t want to solve the problem,” said longtime Providence environmental advocate Greg Gerritt. “They just want to play games to make our lives more difficult and our country more dirty.”
Environmental groups like Save The Bay, the Audubon Society of Rhode Island and Clean Water Action say a 10-cent deposit on beverage containers would also act as an incentive for people to pick up litter that, if uncollected, washes into rivers and on into Narragansett Bay.
They cite studies, including one recent one that estimated the top two inches of sediments at the bottom of the Bay contains 1,000 tons of microplastics.
Researchers with The Nature Conservancy who do fish surveys in the Upper Bay are also seeing evidence of littering, said Angela Tuoni, acting director of climate and government relations with the organization in Rhode Island.
“Plastic containers are a big part of what we’re finding when we’re looking for marine life,” she said.
All that garbage is more than just a nuisance, said De La Cruz. It blocks up storm drains and exacerbates flooding that is growing worse with climate change.
“We’re in the age where we’re experiencing more extreme storms, more intense flash flooding events,” she said. “And we cannot afford to have our storm drains clogged up. It becomes a resiliency matter, a public safety matter.”
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Would a bottle bill work in RI? Some say it would cost consumers more