Advocates are hoping that Governor Deval Patrick, who
included an update of the 25 year old Bottle Bill in the state budget he
released yesterday, will help lead the charge through the legislature, where
this proposal has been stalled for over a decade. “We’ve been pushing for this
update since the mid 1990’s,” commented Janet S. Domenitz, Executive Director of
MASSPIRG. “We began to say that it would likely pass when ice covered the earth,
well, the time may now have arrived.”
When the Bottle Bill passed into law in 1982, many of
the containers on store shelves today did not exist. Vitamin drinks, iced teas,
bottled water, and other ‘new age’ beverages have all come on the market since
that time, and, according to the testimony of former Senator Lois Pines at last
year’s hearing, would certainly have been covered by the deposit system had they
been around.
“There have been Governors before Mr. Patrick who have
proposed to update the Bottle Bill, our hope is that this time will be
different,” remarked Phil Sego of the Sierra Club of Massachusetts. “Given that
the update would bring in revenue while eliminating waste and saving cities and
towns disposal costs, you’d have to be against motherhood and apple pie to
oppose this now,” he said.
MASSPIRG, the Sierra Club, the South Shore Recycling
Cooperative, the Mass. Coalition of Redemption Centers, the Container Recycling
Institute, Representative Alice K. Wolf, Senator Cynthia Creem, and many others
have been championing the update for several legislative sessions. “We could win
the Super Bowl of recycling by passing this update,” said
Domenitz.
