MASSPIRG Calls For Update To Bottle Bill
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BOTTLE BILL UPDATE—MASSPIRG’s Executive Director Janet Domenitz speaks to reporters at a press conference on the Bottle Bill, joined by Cambridge City Councilor Brian Murphy and state Rep. Alice Wolf (Cambridge). |
On Oct. 31, MASSPIRG headed up a long list of supporters testifying for an update to the commonwealth’s landmark Bottle Bill at a legislative hearing.
Before the packed hearing room, MASSPIRG’s Janet Domenitz called for an overhaul of the 25-year-old recycling program and registered support for House Bill 3356. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Doug Petersen (Marblehead), would expand the scope of the Bottle Bill to include more containers, such as bottled water and sports drinks. The bill would also restore the Clean Environment Fund, a program that channels unclaimed deposits toward environmental protection efforts, and raise the handling fee that redemption centers and retailers receive as compensation for their work processing returned containers.
Before the hearing, advocates from MASSPIRG and Massachusetts Sierra Club were joined by Sen. Cynthia Creem (Newton), Reps. Doug Petersen and Alice Wolf (Cambridge), James Hunt, chief of Environmental and Energy Services for the City of Boston, and Cambridge City Councilor Brian Murphy at a press conference to show support for the update.
At the hearing before the Joint Committee on Telecom, Utilities and Energy, supporters testifying for an update ranged from legislators, to redemption center owners, to students from a western Massachusetts high school class. The Massachusetts Food Association, Shaw’s and several other businesses spoke out against reform.
Former Sen. Lois Pines of Newton, an author of the original Bottle Bill, testified after the bill’s opponents. Said Pines, “These are the ‘same old, same old’ arguments we heard back then, and yet we ended up with a great recycling program, which now needs to be tweaked.”
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Bill Filed To Base Insurance Rates On Driving Records
MASSPIRG joined a broad coalition of lawmakers, consumer groups and insurance agents at a Statehouse press conference on Oct. 24 to announce the filing of a new bill that would ensure that auto insurance rates would be based on consumers’ driving records and not on unrelated or discriminatory factors.
The unique coalition, led by the chairs of the Post Audit and Oversight Committee, Sen. Dianne Wilkerson (Roxbury) and Rep. Antonio Cabral (New Bedford), includes over 70 legislators from the House and Senate, representing both urban and rural communities from Cape Cod to North Adams; the mayors of Boston and New Bedford; consumer advocates including MASSPIRG, the Center for Insurance Research, Consumer Federation of America and the Massachusetts Consumers’ Coalition; and insurance agents from across the state.
“How much we pay for auto insurance should be based on how well we drive, period. Not whether we are a landscaper or a CEO, married or single, a graduate of high school or grad school, or, for that matter, whether we watched the Red Sox win the World Series from a local bar or a luxury box at Fenway,” MASSPIRG’s Deirdre Cummings said at the press conference.
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