The D.C. Council is pushing what’s being called a “bottle bill” aimed at boosting recycling around the District and reducing one of the leading causes of pollution in city waterways.
It would create a deposit system similar to what’s in place in a handful of other states, requiring anyone buying a bottled or canned beverage to pay a 10-cent deposit, redeemable once the empty bottle is returned.
The bill is being led by Ward 1 Council member Brianne Nadeau, but has the backing of 11 total members of the council, giving it a veto-proof majority. She said it would encourage more recycling in D.C., including an increase in material that actually gets recycled.
“Our current recycling program is inadequate,” said Nadeau, who cited a study claiming only 24% of beverage containers bought in D.C. actually make it through a recycling facility. “When beverage containers make it into the recycling stream, they are often contaminated as a result of the single stream recycling system we rely on. When that happens, these containers are ultimately rejected by recycling facilities and end up at an incinerator or landfill.”
She said the money D.C. residents would get for participating will add up, based on the strong return rates in other states with similar programs. But those programs have all operated for decades. Nadeau said she believes the District’s version would catch on fast.
“I think they’ll see pretty quickly that it’s a way to earn money,” she said. “Word gets out pretty fast when something becomes valuable and redeemable.”
Retail establishments that participate in the program would get a fee from D.C. for handling the bottles and cans. The city would also create a new wing inside the Department of the Environment to oversee the program, collect the recyclable materials and help retailers that do participate.
Dairy products, infant formula and medication would be exempt from the deposit program.
“Bottles and cans now rank as the No. 1 item of trash in our rivers and, frankly, in our communities,” said Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen, who heads the committee likely to take up the bill first.
Anacostia Riverkeeper Trey Sherard said the sheer number of bottles picked up by volunteers throughout the watershed could approach 25,000 every year.
“We have cleared over a quarter-million plastic bottles picked up in the trash traps and at volunteer cleanups in D.C. in just the past 10 years,” Sherard said. “And that number is not going down.”
Nadeau said technology exists to make it simple for retailers to participate — think of a reverse vending machine used to collect the materials — and will also ensure D.C. isn’t paying for bottles and cans bought in other states.
A bill is being proposed in Maryland for the third year in a row that mirrors what D.C. is proposing.
That bill, sponsored by Howard County Delegate Jen Terrasa, would charge a 10-cent deposit for containers 24 fluid ounces or less, and 15 cents for anything bigger, up to three liters. People who put the bottles in their curbside recycling bins would not get the rebate.
A spokeswoman for Terrasa provided a fact sheet that claimed only about a quarter of the roughly 5.5 billion cans and bottles bought in Maryland are recycled, and that more than 4 billion wind up either in landfills, waterways or on the side of the road.
She said if Maryland implemented the program, 3.6 billion more cans and bottles, including 2.3 billion plastic bottles, would be recycled every year.
The bill was introduced at the start of the session but has not been scheduled for a committee hearing yet.
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