Bottling Up Litter

...Gudger and Bailes, however, found an overall gain of 365 jobs and an additional payroll of $1.6 million...

...Bottling Up Litter JOHN DERNBACH Oregon's "bottle bill" has come of age...

...Soft drink prices in Washington, in fact, have increased more than Oregon prices...

...Beverage sales have been unaffected...

...KAB has spent more than $40 million since its inception to " e d u c a t e " the public against litter...

...Beverage prices in Oregon have risen somewhat, mostly as a result of inflation, but remain competitive with other states...

...The enactment of the law was accompanied by layoffs at Emerald Canning Co...

...Nearly half of all cans and bottles made in 1973 were throwaways...

...Meanwhile, the position of the environmentalists looks stronger than ever...

...plant at Yakima, Washington...

...EPA has suggested that a five or ten year phase-in period could minimize economic repercussions resulting from a national measure...

...In fact, 960 million, or only 3 per cent, of the 31.3 billion glass containers produced last year were reclaimed...

...Despite this, a considerable body of information is being developed about mandatory refund legislation...

...Nonreturnables account for 8 per cent of the municipal solid waste pile, much of which is unloaded in open dumps or, in coastal communities, towed out to sea...

...People who buy nonreturnables for convenience often find it more convenient to litter than to use a litter bag...

...The National Association of Secondary Materials Industries summarizes this concept in the slogan, "markets first, collection second...

...In 1973, the Glass Container Manufacturers Institute (GCMI) announced a "third record-breaking year for the nation's glass bottle recycling program" and exclaimed that "millions of bottles have been collected so far...

...All levels of government together spend several hundred million dollars annually to pick up litter, one-third to one-half of which (by weight or volume) is throwaways...

...At least 1.6 million tons of steel, 575,000 tons of aluminum, and some 6 million tons of glass went into their production...

...John Dernbach is a University of Wisconsin student who has studied the problem of litter disposal since 1971...

...in Eugene, Oregon, and a National Can Co...

...If KAB's notion of litter control has been dealt a blow, the myth of the unique ability of recycling to control solid waste has been devastated...

...The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently reversed its longstanding opposition to the concept of mandatory refund laws and noted that economic repercussions could be minimized...

...If the voluntary collection efforts these container companies promote can be damned because they don %t work, they can be doubly damned because they cant work...

...Bottles reusable by several companies, such as standardized beer bottles, provide a two-cent refund...

...Market problems can be most frustrating'' for voluntary can recyclers, notes Fred Berman, president of the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel...

...The measure is so successful that pro-industry Softdrinks magazine has found the bottlers, brewers, and container manufacturers opposing it " t o be on the unfortunate side of a substantial credibility gap...

...Local residents are asked to bring their cans and bottles to a central location (frequently a container plant) on given days...

...In addition, EPA's 1973 Report to Congress on Resource Recovery notes that " t h e level of recycling depends almost entirely on economics...

...More than nine-tenths of packaged beer and soft drinks in Oregon are now sold in returnables...

...Employment has increased...

...He has written on the subject for several publications and has testified before state and municipal investigative bodies...

...Glass recycling has been hindered by the competition of cheap raw materials and the lack of technology to separate glass from large quantities of municipal waste...

...KAB), " t h e national public service organization for the prevention of litter...

...It points out that recycling is impeded by discriminatory railroad freight rates, zoning and licensing restrictions, purchasing specifications, depletion allowances, and capital gains benefits for the virgin materials industries...

...Their "educational value" misleads the public into believing that the collection of empty containers— not markets—is the answer to the refuse problem...

...In addition to reducing litter, solid waste, and energy consumption (the measure saved the energy equivalent to heat 2 per cent of the homes in the state, according to the Oregon Environmental Council), the Oregon law has been less than disastrous for affected businesses...

...Although several reclamation systems are available, a 1972 report by the General Accounting Office acknowledged five years of failure in the demonstration grant program for recycling technology...

...In one case, a steel company discarded the cans it received from a volunteer group...

...Despite t h e threat of fines or other penalties, litterbugs know they are not likely to be caught...

...South Dakota recently banned nonreturnables, joining a small but growing number of cities, counties, states, and Canadian provinces which have anti-throwaways laws...

...Technology is not likely to dramatically improve the marketability of products...

...Many people pick up those few beverage containers which are littered to collect the refund...

...Proponents of mandatory refund legislation are still having difficulty, however...

...In sharply reducing sales of nonreturnables, the law has also introduced a means of reducing trash which is more efficient than recycling...

...This rate can be justified only "from a public relations point of view," said one smelter executive in an interview with Metalworking News...

...The program is typical of the success in other industries...

...both will become increasingly scarce...

...With EPA's endorsement, the issue may come to a head before Congress in the next session...

...For recycling to succeed, however, recycled materials must be able to compete economically with virgin resources...

...The markets for empty cans and bottles, although improving, are generally artificial...

...And most of it points to the desirability of controlling throwaways...

...Although their magnesium content and loss of metal in the smelting process make aluminum cans less desirable as scrap, aluminum companies pay $200 a ton and more for them...

...A study of the economic impact of the law by Charles Gudger and Jack Bailes of the Oregon State University School of Business and Technology found an 88 per cent drop in solid waste from beverage containers...

...The United States imports some 90 per cent of its aluminum ore and one-third of its iron ore...

...The myth of litter control by individual efforts was developed by Keep America Beautiful, Inc...

...Despite these efforts, most authorities agree that litter, especially from nonreturnables, is increasing...

...Founded in 1953 to stifle some of the first public outcries against nonreturnables, KAB includes among its members Continental Can, Pepsi- Cola, Reynolds Aluminum, and Anheuser-Busch...

...The measure had reduced the incidence of littered throwaway beverage containers by attaching a value to them...

...Sharp drops in packaging costs, though, have led to large profit increases for bottlers and brewers, according to Gudger and Bailes, yielding a net increase in operating income for all businesses of $4 million...

...A mandatory deposit system," says EPA Deputy Administrator John Quarles Jr., "results in conservation of energy and materials and a reduction in solid waste and litter caused by beverage containers...

...These figures, of course, grow every year...

...reclamation rates for steel and aluminum cans were 4.6 per cent and 16.6 per cent respectively...

...The overall thrust of KAB's message is that "containers don't litter—people d o . " This theme has been repeated in the "Pitch-In" campaign of the United States Brewers Association and by state-based KABtype groups such as Keep Michigan Beautiful...

...Oregon's "bottle b i l l " has reduced overall litter in the state by at least 23 per cent...

...In addition, solid waste disposal is becoming more difficult and expensive as landfill sites become scarce and costs soar—especially in urban areas...

...Incomes of can and bottle manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers have declined because of the shift to returnables and the consequent increased handling costs...

...The Oregon law, enacted in October 1972, requires a mandatory refund of five cents for no-deposit, noreturn beverage containers and bans pull-tab cans...

...Claiming all along that the law would wreak havoc on their businesses and fail to stop litter, they seem for the most part to have been proven wrong...

...Attempts on any level to enact beverage container laws are met with stiff opposition...

...As a result of the efforts of those making nonreturnables—the can, glass, and aluminum companies—thousands of small, highly publicized recycling efforts have sprung up in recent years...

...Nor will technologically advanced collection and separation systems help the situation...