What's New
Victory! On June 7, the Governor signed into law a bill that will add water bottles to Oregon's Bottle Bill. Oregon was the first state in the nation to add a 5-cent refund to bottles and cans to cut down on litter and increase recycling. The program has achieved recycling rates higher than 80%, but has never applied to non-carbonated beverages. The decision to add water bottles is the first major update to the Bottle Bill in 36 years.
Background
Oregon was the first state to put a refundable 5-cent deposit on bottles, back in 1971, and the results were impressive. According to the research arm of the U.S. Congress, the Bottle Bill cut bottle litter on roads and beaches by 83% and cut total litter by 47 percent.
The Bottle Bill has allowed Oregon to be a national leader in recycling: bottles and cans covered by the Bottle Bill have been recycled for three decades at rates above 80 percent. That saves raw materials and reduces the energy consumed to process raw materials into bottles and cans.
But the market for bottle drinks has changed, and the Bottle Bill hasn’t. The Bottle Bill’s recycling rate started out above 90% in the 1970s. But the value of a nickel has declined a lot—a nickel today is worth less than a penny in 1971 cents. And recycling has dropped off accordingly,
An even bigger impact comes from the changing types of drinks on the market. The Bottle Bill only applies to carbonated beverages—beer and pop. But today’s beverage market is swamped by water, flavored waters, juices, sports drinks, and teas. None of them are carbonated, and none of them are covered by the Bottle Bill.
Last year, Oregonians threw more than 126 million plastic water bottles in the trash.
So Environment Oregon is advocating an updated Bottle Bill. Senate Bill 707 will add water and flavored water to the list of covered beverages. It also makes it more convenient to return bottles and cans to the grocery store by requiring stores to take all brands of covered beverages, not just the brands they sell. The bill will also set up a task force to study other ways of increasing recycling of bottles and cans, including increasing the value of the deposit and considering alternative collection systems.
