My last column in the Sunday Gazette was about the enhanced bottle bill and what I believed to be flaws in the bill. One thing I proposed is that the bottle deposit be raised to twenty-five cents. New Yorkers only return 70.2% of their bottles. A quarter deposit would ensure that almost all bottles would be returned.
In today’s Daily Gazette, Charlotte A. Fabozzi of Amsterdam says that twenty-five cents is too much. She argues, “If a local store has cola on sale for $2 a six pack, the bottle deposit would be $1.50 for a $2 item. This is unrealistic.”
She does not go onto explain why that is unrealistic.
Unless you wait until you have hundreds of bottles and cans before you return them to the store, even with a quarter deposit, you won’t have a lot of money tied up. Michigan has been charging a dime deposit for a quarter century. A quarter today is equal to what a dime was then. New York State has been charging a nickel for a quarter century. What is unrealistic is not acknowledging that times have changed, nickels and dimes are not what they used to be and many people won’t bother returning or picking up bottles that are only worth a nickel.
Some states already charge fifteen cents for some bottles. Furthermore, back in the 1980s when Stewart’s had returnable quart sized bottles the deposit was twenty-five cents. I did not have a problem paying it then, and I wouldn’t now.
I would accept a compromise–something greater than a nickel but less than a quarter–but seeing how long the nickel deposit has been in place, it seems to me that we should go for a quarter deposit.
1 Comment
August 2, 2008 at 12:30 pm
[...] Upstream argues that any bigger-better-bottle-bill in New York ought to up the deposit amount to a quarter; people just don’t care about nickels and dimes these days? [...]