A Maryland group is encouraging lawmakers to pass a bill that would create a 10-cent plastic bottle and can deposit program.
Martha Ainsworth, chair of the Maryland Sierra Club’s Zero Waste Team, said the goal of the program is to capture the billions of beverage containers that don’t get recycled. There are over five billion single-use beverage containers sold in Maryland every year, she said, and only one-fourth of them are recycled.
The group is working on potential legislation with Dels. Jennifer Terrasa and Mark Edelson and Sens. Benjamin Brooks and Sarah Elfreth, Ainsworth said.
“This is the gold standard,” Ainsworth said of the deposit program. “In terms of litter reduction, there really isn’t any policy that works better than this in existence.”
As part of the program, there would be a 10-cent deposit on beverage containers that would be fully refunded when the container is brought back to be recycled. Potential legislation would have the program starting in 2027, and it would apply to all beverage containers made of plastic, aluminum and glass that are less than 3 liters.
The location that the containers are returned to would be “very close to or in front of where you might have purchased it … so this doesn’t make you go out of your way,” according to Ainsworth.
The program would also have to meet a 90% recycling rate within its first five years, she said.
“When there’s a price attached to an empty beverage container, fewer people litter them,” Ainsworth said.
The programs are becoming increasingly popular in Europe, Ainsworth said, and 10 states have adopted them.
“We see litter on the side of the road, we see the plastic water bottles floating down the river,” Ainsworth said. “Plastic pollution is a real concern now for people. There’s a public health concern. We find it in our homes, in our house dust, in the top of Mount Everest, bottom of the Mariana Trench.”
The program would be self-financing, Ainsworth said.
“It doesn’t involve any tax,” she said. “It’s paid for by registration and fees paid by beverage producers; the sale of the raw materials that are collected.”
The initiative would set the stage for introducing reusable beverage containers, Ainsworth said.
“In order to get to reusable containers, you have to have a deposit,” she said. “No one will manufacture them if you can’t get them back.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This report has been updated to clarify how the program will be paid for.
Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.
© 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.
