A brief history of how government programs to collect deposit containers failed to keep up with the times, and what it means for e-waste and health care.See Boston Globe on Struggling Redemption Centers...
I don't understand how people failed to grasp this when I was at Massachusetts DEP, and still don't seem to grasp it.
The bottle bill was an anti-litter campaign before it was a recycling campaign. It somewhat arbitrarily went after "carbonated" beverages and not juice, and failed to anticipate bottled water.
Most of the bottles and cans returned for deposit are single-serve. Most of those are consumed away from home, at the office or in the car.
Most of those are collected by janitors, custodians, and pickers, and brought to redemption centers (not to retail stores). The redemption centers, in 1996, were 2% of the locations but handled 40+% of the total volume. They haven't had a handling fee increase since the 1980s and some of the distributors stopped collecting from them, making them drive out of state to deliver the containers for no additional fee.
Janitors and park-pickers need the redemption centers. No one wants people with 600 cans and bottles inside the retail supermarkets. And curbside programs don't do office buildings and parks (though that could change with my Tomra recommendation below).
So here are some recommendations.... 15 years later
