Oregon's bottle bill next up for recycling

The Oregonian, HARRY ESTEVE
Sunday, December 10, 2006

A plastic half-liter bottle of "sparkling" Arrowhead water costs 60 cents plus a nickel deposit that can be redeemed in Oregon when the bottle's empty.

Two feet away on the supermarket shelf are nearly identical bottles of "plain" Arrowhead water with no deposit required.

The difference? Bubbles. Another difference? Once empty, the bottle of plain water is nearly three times as likely to be thrown away as the bottle of fizzy water.

Oregon's bottle bill, adopted in 1971, required deposits only on carbonated drinks because in those days most of the beer and soda bottles could be refilled at the bottling plant. Thirty-five years later, the law that sparked a national recycling ethic has become the Rip Van Winkle of environmental legislation, awakening to an alien world of boutique water, tea and energy drinks and rapidly changing consumer tastes.

"The bottle bill was originally a very simple concept," says Lee Barrett, chairman of the Association of Oregon Recyclers, which promotes the practice of cutting or reusing waste. "In today's world, it has become extremely complex."

Oregon's law has been overshadowed by other states that cover more, collect more and don't put consumers through those dirty, drippy return machines. Past attempts to bring Oregon's bottle bill into the 21st century have hit brick walls, usually erected by lobbyists for distributors and grocery stores.

But momentum is growing in Oregon to update the bill, which has been responsible for recycling billions of drink containers. Barrett and others say a rising economy, Democratic control of the Oregon Legislature and waning influence of some key interest groups could give them their best shot yet at revamping the law.

"I have never seen a more positive climate for doing something to modernize our bottle bill," says state Rep. Vicki Berger, R-Salem. Berger, whose father was instrumental in passing the original bill, has become the go-to lawmaker for bottle bill changes.

A law with a legacy

Adopted under Gov. Tom McCall as a way to cut down on roadside litter, Oregon's groundbreaking deposit law gave the state an environmentally progressive reputation it still enjoys. The law got consumers in the habit of saving and recycling empty bottles and helped spawn a host of other programs aimed at keeping used materials, including paper and plastic, out of landfills.

That colorful bucket you fill with newspapers and cat food cans and set on the curb? Thank -- or curse -- the bottle bill. Yet over more than three decades, the Legislature has approved only a handful of minor changes to the law.

During that same time, new products and new containers have revolutionized the beverage industry. Who knew consumers would trade their Dr Pepper for Rock Star energy drink or translucent bottles of chilled green tea? Plastic bottles, meanwhile, have taken up a huge share of the drink container market. A decade ago, one in 10 bottles was made of plastic; now more than one in four is plastic.

Plastic bottles can be recycled at curbside, but most often they aren't. In 2005, for example, Oregonians threw away about 125 million empty water bottles, or about 35 for every man, woman and child in Oregon, according to statistics from the state Department of Environmental Quality. That's up from the 30 million disposed in 1998.

When collected and processed for recycling, plastic bottles can be used to make a variety of other products, including carpet, fleece coats and mudflaps for trucks. Aluminum cans are re-smelted and turned into new cans.

Question of resources

After the session opens Jan. 8, Berger plans to introduce a bill that, for starters, would require deposits on all water bottles as well as aluminum cans that hold noncarbonated drinks, bringing millions of new containers into the law's reach. "It's an incredible resource that's being wasted," she says, and Oregon's bottle bill no longer has enough teeth to stop the waste.

Recycling advocates, however, don't agree on the next step. At a one-day conference last week to look at modernizing Oregon's bottle bill, ideas ran rampant.

Solutions ranged from a complete overhaul of the system, in which all drink containers would have deposits and could be returned to privately run redemption centers, to establishing a "recycling bank," in which curbside recycling boxes are weighed and households receive a corresponding range of awards, such as Starbucks gift cards or discounts at local grocery stores.

Jerry Powell, who publishes the Portland-based Resource Recycling magazine and who helped organized the bottle bill conference, says the biggest obstacle to change is the lack of agreement among the players. Grocery stores that collect the returns consider them a headache and sanitation issue. Distributors responsible for collecting and redeeming deposits say there's no market for the materials, especially glass. Environmental groups want to see more recycling, however it's accomplished.

Yet, when a coalition of environmental groups met this year to discuss their agenda for the upcoming legislative session, the bottle bill didn't make the cut, Powell says. At the time, it was widely expected the House would remain in Republican control and that the distributors, led by lobbyist Paul Romain, would be able to block any effort to expand the bill.

"Romain is the tornado of Oregon politics," Powell said. "Everybody said, 'No, this can't go anywhere because of Romain and a Republican House.' "

Then Romain became the target of news stories about his role in taking lawmakers on unreported trips to Hawaii, paid for by beer and wine distributors. And the November election threw the House into Democratic hands. "Things have changed," Powell says.

Romain disputes his role in tamping down bottle bill changes. He says bigger forces, such as markets and consumer convenience, have been at play. He also says his clients might accept adding plastic bottles to the deposit law, but expanding it much beyond that doesn't make sense.

"Plastic still has some value, as opposed to glass," he says. "We can't get rid of that stuff, there's no market for it. If there's no reuse of it, why go through all these different steps to collect it?"

Grocers opposed

Joe Gilliam, lobbyist for the Oregon Grocery Association, told the gathering at the bottle bill conference that his clients would oppose any expansion bill that leads to more material coming into supermarkets.

"We can sit back and kill bottle bills," Gilliam said confidently, drawing some groans from the audience. "We've got the money to do it. We've got the political know-how to do it."

Powell says he sympathizes with the grocers but says Oregon could move away from that system by developing a network of redemption centers. That's proving successful in several other states and in Canada, he says.

But the bottle bill with its required deposits remains the most effective method for ensuring that millions of tons of drink containers get recycled. Nationally, consumers toss more than two out of every three soda or beer bottles they empty, even though most cities now have curbside recycling programs. In Oregon, one of 10 states with deposit laws, 83 percent of those bottles are recycled.

Alex Cuyler, a lobbyist for the city of Eugene and a leader in Oregon's recycling movement, says there's still time to present a comprehensive bill to the Legislature that brings the state into the modern era of recycling.

"The challenge is how to make that work, but we can do it," he says. "You could look at this legislative session as a unique opportunity."

Berger, the Republican lawmaker, says she is open to any idea that gets traction among her colleagues.

"I will go ahead on my draft, but I'm mindful there are other ways to do it," she says. One way or another, the bottle bill is likely to get a needed tune-up, she predicts. "The stars are aligned."

Harry Esteve: 503-221-8226; harryesteve@news.oregonian.com

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