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By CHRISTOPHER KEATING - March 19, 2021
HARTFORD — A key proposal to recycle more glass in Connecticut was debated Friday as lawmakers heard testimony on a bill that calls for adding deposit fees on all wine and liquor bottles, as well as boosting the fee to 10 cents, up from the current 5 cents.
With trash piling up daily, state legislators and environmentalists want to get everything possible out of the waste stream as Connecticut faces mounting environmental problems.
But package store owners strongly opposed the proposal, saying they do not have enough space in their small stores to accept wine and liquor bottles that are not currently accepted at machines at supermarkets. The measure would also add a deposit fee to hard ciders, hard seltzers, iced teas, juices, sports drinks and energy drinks for the first time. Deposits would also be collected on miniature liquor bottles that are known as nips.
State environmental Commissioner Katie Dykes said that a coalition of more than 80 cities and towns are trying to combat “the waste disposal crisis that Connecticut is facing.” The answer, she said, is sharply increasing recycling of items like glass, paper, plastic and metal.
“No individual action will solve the waste crisis alone,’' Dykes said.
Connecticut was originally “on the cutting edge when the original bottle bill was passed in 1980,” but the state has fallen behind over the past 40 years and needs to expand the program, she said. The nickel deposit has not increased in four decades.
Only about 50% of Connecticut’s bottles and cans are redeemed — the lowest level of states that have bottle laws, officials said. The money from the other 50% of unredeemed containers goes to the state’s general fund, totaling more than $43 million in the last fiscal year in unclaimed nickels.
The proposed move to deposits of 10 cents is supported by influential players at the Capitol, including Gov. Ned Lamont and House Speaker Matt Ritter of Hartford.
But others like Rep. Thomas O’Dea, a New Canaan Republican, said they first want to see improvements in the recycling system.
“The system is broke,” O’Dea said. “Consumers pay an extra $1.20 for a 24-pack, and it doesn’t work — and now we’re going to double that. I don’t want to do more unless it’s going to work.”
Louis Rosado Burch, Connecticut program director for the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, told O’Dea that the deposit system is not broken, adding that the single-stream system does not solve all problems.
“The bottle bill has done a tremendous job of recycling until recently,” Burch said. “We haven’t updated the deposit amounts from 5 to 10 cents. .. What we see at the curb, at the park, at the beach are, by and large, containers that are not covered. We have a system that creates waste and litter in our communities. Low-income families stand to benefit, as well as every community in the state.”
Nationwide, only Michigan and Oregon currently have bottle deposits of 10 cents. Some lawmakers are concerned that consumers from neighboring states might cross into Connecticut to receive 10 cents per bottle, but supporters predicted that would not be a significant problem because machines could be programmed to recognize out-of-state bottles.
Lawmakers cite the success in Michigan — the state that has the best return rates in the country. Michigan topped 90% for multiple years until dipping to 89% in 2018 and 2019 — a rate far beyond Connecticut’s 50% in 2018 and 2019. Decades ago, Connecticut’s rate was far higher, and the state was seen as a pioneer, officials said.
Chris Cambareri, the second-generation owner of the Willowbrook Spirit Shoppe in Cromwell for the past 31 years, said his small store is so filled that he keeps returned recyclable items in a bag in his truck.
He said he does not have all the answers to recycling that is a worldwide issue, but added that the proposed bill simply provides “Band-aids and kicking the can down the road.”
“We don’t have the space,” Stephen Downes, president of the Connecticut Package Stores Association and co-owner of three liquor stores, said, adding that single-stream recycling should be increased at the curbside. “There are a lot of consumers who don’t like the bottle return. ... I don’t think people throw wine and liquor bottles on the side of the road, but they do throw beer and soda cans.”
The bill also calls for an increase in the handling fee that would help about 15 redemption centers that recycle bottles and cans around the state. Some of the centers have shut down in recent years because the current handling fee of 1.5 cents per container, which has not increased in decades and is paid by the distributors, does not cover their expenses, officials said. The proposed increase would go to 3.5 cents per container — equaling the rate in Massachusetts and New York. The redemption centers are key players in the process because they handle huge volumes of bottles and cans — far beyond a few machines at a supermarket.
Towns favor the bottle proposal because local officials say it will cut down on litter at a time when many towns are losing money on recycling because overseas markets in China have cut back sharply on recycling purchases.
Greenwich First Selectman Fred Camillo, a former Republican state legislator, supports the bipartisan bill because he said debris on the roads and in the parks in Greenwich was reduced in 2009 when the state started charging deposits on water bottles.
With glass largely removed from the single-stream recycling system that is currently collected at the curbside by the towns, municipalities would save money because they would need to haul away fewer items, officials said.