Connecticut lawmakers need to update the bottle bill

Connecticut’s container deposit law, known as the “Bottle Bill,” has been a critical part of our state’s recycling infrastructure for the last 40 years. Refundable container deposits are a proven, effective way to incentivize recycling of single-serve beverage containers and reduce litter in our communities. Unfortunately, the system has not been updated in several years to keep up with changing market trends and inflation.

As a result, Connecticut’s redemption rate is now the lowest of any bottle bill state in the U.S. at around 50%. If the General Assembly fails to take meaningful action on this important program soon, it could decline even further.

This is not to say that Connecticut is not serious about waste reduction and recycling, it just means we have a lot of work to do. Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration recently announced it will allow Materials Innovation and Recovery Authority’s outdated Hartford incinerator retire, rather than grant them the $330 million in subsidies they have demanded in order to keep it in operation. This is the right choice for Connecticut, both from a waste management and an environmental justice standpoint. The facility is aging, it produces harmful air emissions in one of our state’s historically underserved communities, and it hinders progress on meeting our solid waste and recycling goals.

While letting the incinerator retire was the right decision, it does put increased pressure on the state to come up with innovative waste reduction strategies. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection adopted the Comprehensive Materials Management Strategy back in 2016, which set a goal of diverting 60% of the state’s municipal solid waste — through source reduction, reuse and recycling — by 2024. We are now halfway to that 2024 deadline and have arguably made only incremental progress in achieving the goal.

The problem is not that we have a lack of effective policy options but that we do not have elected leaders willing to act to reform our aging solid waste and recycling systems. The General Assembly has sat on an opportunity to update the bottle bill for several years, and it is not due to a lack of public support. If anything, Citizens Campaign for the Environment has demonstrated year after year that the program is quite popular, and there are more than enough votes in the House and Senate to pass commonsense updates to this important program.

The numbers speak for themselves. Connecticut’s bottle bill captures more than 720 million beverage containers annually for recycling and could capture an additional 87 million containers each year by expanding the program to include juices, teas, sports drinks and other non-carbonated beverages. Add wine and liquor to that list and the number grows by more than 124 million a year. Increase the deposit value on covered containers from 5 to 10 cents, and those numbers are projected to grow by 373 million additional containers (by expanding to non-carbonated beverages), and more than 423 million (by expanding to non-carbs, wine and liquor), respectively.

So why have lawmakers not embraced this as a component of Connecticut’s waste reduction strategy? That has less to do with good policy than it does with corporate lobbying. Big beverage manufacturers and local distributors have lobbied leadership for years to prevent changes to the bottle bill. They claim that expansion would force them to raise prices on consumers, and they would prefer to see the cost of recycling their waste fall on cash-strapped municipalities.

In other words, they would rather see that burden fall on the taxpayers of Connecticut. This is unconscionable, especially when one considers the record profits the industry has seen in recent months, due to increased beverage sales during the quarantine.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of all is the that while big beverage lobbies Connecticut lawmakers to defer action on modernizing the bottle bill, they are simultaneously engaged in establishing cutting edge container deposit programs overseas. Since 2017, at least 12 new deposit programs have come online, including several national deposit schemes. As these programs come online, they are anticipated to serve 300 million additional people worldwide, which more than doubles the number of people served by container deposit programs just two years ago.

As Connecticut sets its sights on innovative solid waste and recycling solutions, leadership in the General Assembly must get serious about updating the bottle bill. It’s time for legislators to choose the public interest over corporate lobbying and demand some accountability from beverage distributors. Connecticut needs reasonable, commonsense updates to the bottle bill, and we are running out of time.

Louis Rosado Burch is the Connecticut program director for the Citizens Campaign for the Environment.