Earth Day Repost: Time for a National Recycling Bill

A Call For A National Recycling Bill
March 13th, 2009 Posted in Green Earth News

A few recycling facts:

1) States with bottle bills recycle approximately 78% of the bottles that have deposits. States lacking bottle bill legislation only recycle approximately 23%.

2) Currently ONLY ELEVEN states have deposits on bottles.

3) Recycling deposit laws do not cost taxpayers money. Many states have a fund created by the surplus money from deposits that is not redeemed. This money can be used to fund other projects like curbside recycling programs.

4) Only approximately 30% of the US population currently lives in an area with bottle deposits.

5) Even for those states that have deposit laws, many do not have deposits on bottles for water, juice, iced tea, or energy drinks. These containers are not recycled as much because they don’t have a deposit.

6) Today there are still many areas that do not even offer curbside recycling.

7) Every year millions of beverage containers that could be recycled are thrown away. Most beverage containers are made out of materials that are not considered to be biodegradeable and will last hundreds of years.

8.) Recycling reduces greenhouse gas emmisions

10) According to Aneki.com “the source for world rankings”, The United States ranks 7th in the world for recycling percentage.

11) A National Recycling Law could mandate deposits on all single-serving beverage containers, require curbside recycling in all areas, and provide incentives for companies to product products that are recycleable. This law would help keep roadways clean, reduce landfills, reduce carbon emmissions, create jobs, stimulate the production of more recycled products (a domestic resource), and just be a plain old good idea.

:hi: Out here in rural PA we have large dumpsters located around the county to take our recyclables too, but they don't take everything. Bottle deposits would really help out in PA.

I grew up in a state with a bottle deposit. As a child/teen I'd go through trash cans for soda cans for a little cash.

on the side of the road, and if you do it usually gets picked up pretty quick.

having said that most of the deposit states don't cover water bottles which are used nearly as much as soda nowadays.

it's time to update the laws for the states that have deposit laws, and to implement laws where there none at all. a federal law is the easiest way to accomplish this.

NJ does not have deposit laws, and I constantly take water bottles out of the trash and either save them (I cut them in half as I'm growing veggies inside for another 2 weeks and use the bottles as pots) or throw them in recycling.

I exclusively drink tap water from reusable bottles.

I bought a lot of those teenybopper magazines as a teenager. I'd often walk down to the local shopping center (this was before I drove) and look for bottles and cans. Often one hour of collecting cans got me a magazine.

ETA I did something horrible on earth day :-( I have a major (40+ pages) paper due in 2 weeks, and i was printing out law review articles that were over 15 pages long (I put them into word and shrank the text to 8 point to use less paper), but still used about a ream of paper.