Bottle Bill Bottled Up

The yearly dance in Albany over the expansion of the "Bottle Bill" has just about ended with the legislation failing to be sent to the Senate floor for a vote. This is good news for all of the state's food stores that have been turned into garbage dumps ("transfer stations?") in this flawed and misguided environmental effort.

What gets us is the determination of the folks at NYPIRG and the Environmental Planning Lobby to put businesses on the front line of the solid waste issue when better alternatives exist (We're still waiting for NYPIRG to support any policy that would be good for business-Whose public interest is it anyway?).This is especially true for NYC stores that lack the space to adequately handle the deposit containers.

When it comes to these solid waste problems all of these groups are missing calculators. Their view seems to be: "We don't care what these initiatives will cost the stores or the tax payers." The problem is that the expense of the effort is not effective at really addressing the problem.

This callous disregard is particularly evident in the call to continue to expand deposits will simultaneously running an expensive and inefficient curbside collection program. Since we have examined the entire solid waste/deposit equation we've concluded that the only sensible way to expand the deposit system is to take it out of local stores and establish well-funded free standing redemption centers. Deposits can work more effectively in a system where everyone has the proper incentive to redeem and recycle.