The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [135]
The simple bottle bill has been proven over and over to be a uniquely effective regulatory tool for reducing bottle waste and encouraging refillable bottles and recycling while also conserving raw materials, saving energy, and creating local jobs. Bottle bill laws require a small—usually 5 or 10 cent—deposit per container (beverage bottles or cans, usually), which is repaid to the customer when the empty bottle is returned. Despite massive industry opposition, bottle bills are now in place in eleven states in the United States, plus eight Canadian provinces and a number of other countries (including Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden).37 In 2009, Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts introduced the Bottle Recycling Climate Protection Act of 2009 to Congress. The bill, H.R. 2046, would require a deposit on all beverages in standard containers up to a gallon. Deposits that aren’t collected will fund government programs to reduce greenhouse gas generation.38
Because bottle bills are so effective, every time an attempt is made to introduce or expand a bottle bill, the beverage industries go ballistic opposing it—to the tune of $14 million in campaign contributions aimed at defeating a national bottle bill between 1989 and 1994.39 The opponents argue that deposits are inefficient and old-fashioned, that reusing bottles threatens public health, that deposits simply duplicate what recycling already achieves, and that it constitutes a regressive tax that will hurt local businesses, leading to job losses. Their arguments are bogus. Really, it’s about money: it’s the beverage industries that will bear the costs of collecting and refilling bottles. The Container Recycling Institute, which tracks bottle bill progress, says, “The most outspoken opponents to bottle bills are almost exclusively the big-name beverage producers. The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch, and their bottlers and distributers fight deposit laws at every turn. Retail grocers and liquor storeowners also oppose deposit laws, and in recent years, waste haulers and owners of materials recovery facilities who want the revenue from valuable aluminum cans have joined the opposition.”40 These are the very same companies that boast in their commercials and public relations materials that they support recycling! Sure, they love recycling, as long as there are no bottle bills requiring it.
In 1953, a number of companies involved in making and selling disposable beverage containers created a front group that they maintain to this day, called Keep America Beautiful (KAB). Since the beginning, KAB has worked diligently to ensure that waste was seen as a problem solved by improved individual responsibility, not stricter regulations or bottle bills; it even coined the term “litterbug” to identify the culprit. By spreading slogans like “People start pollution, people can stop it,” KAB effectively shifted attention away from those who design, produce, market, and profit from all those one-way bottles and cans.41 In 1971, KAB created an infamous ad campaign featuring the “crying Indian” (played by actor Iron Eyes Cody, who was, in fact, not a native American at all, but of Italian descent),42 about which writer Ted Williams wrote, “It’s the single most obnoxious commercial ever produced... the ultimate exploitation of Native Americans: First we kicked them off their land, then we trashed it, and now we’ve got them whoring for the trashmakers.”43 More recently, in mid-2009, KAB made an unsuccessful attempt to buy out the National Recycling Coalition (NRC),