(This is a video presentation of the following analysis)
I wanted to make this report on the problems of the bottle deposit program but I first must make this fact clear: In Connecticut, and many other places that have this program, you do not earn five cents for returning a can, bottle, or glass, you REDEEM five cents. This means that you, or whoever bought the drink, had to pay an extra five cents for each bottle at the register, at the time of purchase, and only when you bring back your bottle do you get that five cents back. It seems as if this is something that shouldn't have to be explained but you would be surprised at how many people still do not understand how this works.
Moving on, earlier this year there were reports that the state of Connecticut wanted to raise the bottle deposit up from five cents to ten cents. Also this year in relation to the bottle deposit, a bill was introduced in the state legislature that would drop the deposit of five cents and replace it with a non redeemable tax of four cents, as well as a bill that would require beverage distributors to pay a higher handling fee to bottle redemption centers. Instead of going over the intricacies of these proposals, I think it would be much better to simply explain how the bottle deposit program is just another revenue generating scam by the state.
First it needs to be understood that empty cans, plastic, and glass bottles don't really have any value. If it was cheaper to create new bottles out of recycled bottles than it was to create them from scratch, bottle manufacturers would be paying you for the empty bottles. In other words, if you could actually make something of value out of your used bottles, at a profit, the state wouldn't need to force you to recycle, there would be a market for them, people would be offering you money for your empty bottles. As an example of this, the state doesn't need to force people to recycle copper, or other forms of scrap metal because the cost of recycling these things is currently cheaper than the cost of manufacturing them from scratch. Because of this people will come and take the metal from a garbage pile on your sidewalk for free, or go into your house uninvited to steal your copper pipes.
The time and money that it takes to collect recycled bottles, truck them to a location, sort them, clean them, and actually begin the recycling process is highly inefficient and cannot be done at a cost that would make this process profitable. A representative from the Coca Cola Company testifying against one of the proposed bottle bills briefly describes the problem his company faces:
"Though our industry sells tens of millions of dollars in bottle bill scrap from Connecticut, the revenue does not come close to balancing the inherent expense our industry faces in fuel, energy and handling fees … nor does it compensate for the sub-optimization of our delivery routes and warehouse space, as a lot of time and space is required to handle containers for processing."Of course this is all done under the guise of protecting the environment but when you factor in the fossil fuel used to move these recyclables around, the energy used at these recycle facilities, the water used to clean the empty bottles, and other aspects of the process, it could leave a person questioning whether this is really helping the environment at all. And while many environmentalists support these forced recycling projects and any project that has the stated goal to conserve resources, they seem to neglect the most important resource of all, the one that we can't make more of; time. Every moment of the process, from you bringing your bottles to the redemption center to the recycled plastic being turned into something is time lost that could have been used to do something more productive or preferential.
