Environmental Benefits of Bottle Bills
Bottle bills serve two purposes: to reduce litter pollution and to reduce reliance on virgin resources through recycling. Both are accomplished through a redemption value. By assigning a monetary value on the recycling, not trashing or littering, of a container, bottle bills prevent the landfilling or littering of about 80% of the containers used in bottle bill states annually. Compare that to states without bottle bills, where on average less than 25% of beverage containers are prevented from being landfilled or littered.
Because they are often consumed away from home, beverage containers and other single-use containers have a high propensity to be littered. Urban litter is a serious problem because it is the primary source of litter pollution in waterways. Urban litter, especially plastic litter, is easily transported through creeks or storm drains to the ocean. Once in the ocean, urban litter floats with ocean currents and converges in gyres, or garbage patches. In the North Pacific Garbage Patch above Hawaii, plastic outweighs plankton by a factor of 46.
Bottle bills are the most effective way to prevent the littering of single-use items. Indeed, although the consumption of beverage containers in urban areas is highly prevalent, bottle bill containers are not a large component of urban litter, as measured by clean up studies. By assigning a monetary value to the recycling of a container, that container is less likely to be littered. If the container is littered, container deposits increase the likelihood that it will be picked up and recycled before it is transported into a waterway.
Recycling is also one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Beverage container recycling prevents the emission of hundreds of thousands of tons of GHG annually. Bottle bills prevent GHG emissions in two ways. First, by promoting the use of recycled material, bottle bills prevent the mining of virgin resources, mining operations that can be extremely polluting and resource-intensive. Second, by preventing the landfilling of billions of beverage containers annually, bottle bills prevent the emission of methane gas, a powerful GHG that is produced as a result of anaerobic degradation in landfills.
Finally, some bottle bills, such as California's, contain extended producer responsibility elements that encourage beverage manufacturers to design their products to be recyclable. In California, this is accomplished through the processing fee/payment program. Recyclers of beverage containers receive a processing payment that is equal to the difference between the cost to recycle that container type and the value of the recycled product (the price it fetches in the marketplace, known as its scrap price). Beverage container manufacturers pay a processing fee based on container type. Manufacturers of beverages in highly recyclable container types, like glass, pay a significantly smaller processing fee than manufacturers of beverages in difficult to recycle container types, like #3-7 plastic.
Learn more about beverage container recycling in your state.
