Study Supports Deposit Laws, Reverse Vending

A study sponsored by a collection of environmental and industry organizations has identified procedures that can help capture more containers for recycling, particularly in bottle bill states.

“Understanding Beverage Container Recycling: A Value Chain Assessment,” was conducted by R.W. Beck and Associates, Seattle, and Franklin & Associates, Prairie Village, Kan., with the involvement of both beverage industry and environmental group representatives.

Among the report’s findings is that when deposit systems are designed to use revenues from the sale of recycled materials and unredeemed deposits (deposit money left in the system by consumers who do not return their containers), these revenues offset recycling program costs significantly.

“In California and several Canadian provinces, beverage containers do not have to be sorted by brand. That saves a lot of time and cuts costs,” says Rick Best, a board member of the Grass Roots Recycling Network (GRRN), Athens, Ga., who also helped oversee the study.  “Additional cost savings are realized in many places by the use of automated reverse vending machines for returning containers,” he adds.

“These findings have the potential to break the historic impasse between environmentalists and the beverage industry on bottle bills,” says Bill Sheehan, executive director of the GRRN. “We found ways to achieve the environmental performance that we want along with the cost-savings that industry wants.”

Information for the study was gathered by researchers who often work for the beverage industry, under the lead of R.W. Beck and Franklin & Associates. Beverage industry leader Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta, sponsored and participated in the study along with Waste Management Inc., Houston, and other companies and organizations. The study was the first accomplishment of a project called Businesses and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling (BEAR).

“We are encouraged that some major corporations now agree we have a problem—114 billion beverage containers wasted annually - and are willing to work toward a solution,” says Pat Franklin, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), Washington. “The report shows we can recover those containers with financial incentives—deposits—and keep the costs down.”

The most active opponents of container deposit and return systems are typically grocery store owners and other retailers who end up with an often-uncompensated management role in such systems.

CRI and GRRN say they see the next step as working with industry to structure a modified deposit/return proposal that takes advantage of these cost savings, and working with industry in test states to establish or improve optimal deposit systems.