6 ms·

The 5 cent (or more) recycling deposit has always made sense to me as essentially a littering/co-mingling tax. Pay a little at purchase which funds the collecti

The 5 cent (or more) recycling deposit has always made sense to me as essentially a littering/co-mingling tax. Pay a little at purchase which funds the collection and proper disposal/recycling.

m-p-3 7y ago
Agreed, it pushes the purchaser to bring it back and also ensure the materials are triaged properly. If they don't, then someone else can collect the refund. If it was me I'd put the deposit to 10¢. More people would actually return them, and those who depends on it to make the ends meet wouldn't need to gather as much to make the same amount.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  That would also probably be fair given that nickel deposits were mostly decided on decades ago. The first $.05 bottle deposit law was created in 1972. That would be equivalent to about $.30 today. That would be a much more compelling amount for a modern day citizen to recycle for.
- onion2k 7y ago
  It could be $10 and people renting $13500/month apartments still wouldn't take their cans and bottles back themselves.
  - freeone3000 7y ago
    Right, but someone else would. Is the goal to teach a moral lesson, or to ensure cans get collected?
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    Their loss? If they don't mind offloading that job to someone else and paying for it, then everyone is happy.
- bloopernova 7y ago
  Michigan's deposit is 10 cents per bottle/can. 97% of bottles and cans are recycled, even while Michigan's recycling rate of other materials is pretty low. Exactly what you described is what happens: If the purchaser doesn't recycle the cans, someone else will. Charities and other people will ask for cans to recycle, and some people will comb through trashcans to get a couple of bucks of empties.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    97% if you look at MI sales and MI returns, but how much of that is non-MI material being returned to MI? It sounds ridiculous, but there were even cases in Europe of « fake » bottles manufactured exclusively for getting a refund by the multi-million.
JCharante 7y ago
But it's such a small deposit. I'd rather see a $1 or $2 deposit to encourage more people to do their own recycling, to discourage single usage containers, which I think the US's culture would benefit from.
- ars 7y ago
  For $1 I'd be happy to make and ship bottles complete with authentic looking labels to you. i.e. if it wasn't obvious, that would have way too much fraud.
  - tehlike 7y ago
    Reminds me of this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-190... When a measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure.
  - allovernow 7y ago
    That's an interesting point. I bet the price of plastic has gone down since the original value was chosen. I wonder what price point makes fraud economical on a large enough scale to attract someone with access to manufacturing...
  - labster 7y ago
    Heck, even at 2.5 and 5 cents, California had a bottle recycling rate of 102% a few years back. Just bringing legit bottles across the border was a profitable activity until they started cracking down.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    That’s already happened: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/fraudster-made-1m-from-recycling-bottles-german-court-hears https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/fraudster-made...
- gjs278 7y ago
  that’s absurdly elitist of you to suggest this. the damage the cans cost us is not anywhere near a dollar either.
mdasen 7y ago
The article notes that the 5-cent deposit is hampering recycling rather than helping it. The Natural Resources Defense Council noted that expanding the bottle deposit would "punch a hole in the economic model of curbside recycling." That's because recyclers "want the good stuff, we want the metal and the good plastics." Whether a can is recycled by curbside pickup or by bringing it to a redemption center probably doesn't really matter environmentally. Curbside might have an advantage if they can more efficiently collect them (using less fuel and such). In this case, removing valuable recyclables like metal and good plastics from the curbside stream means making curbside recycling less valuable overall. It's transferring money from the city to the individuals collecting the cans. I'm definitely not faulting the people collecting the cans. They're trying to make ends meet in a city that can be tough. However, for the environment, the bottle deposit doesn't seem to be a tax that helps out recycling - it's a tax that hurts recycling. If the state expands the bottle deposit to include more bottles, it will remove more high-value recyclables from the curbside recycling stream. Those high-value recyclables subsidize the recycling of less valuable recyclables. That means that we lose the funding for a lot of our recycling. It's ultimately a poor use of human time to just be moving things around. Rather than entering the curbside stream and getting recycled, people do a lot of more labor so that they...get recycled. The end result is the same, but there's more human labor used, more fuel used, more costs paid, etc. And it makes curbside recycling of other items less economical.
- namdnay 7y ago
  What do you mean by recycling? Melting down the bottles to make “new” glass? That’s extremely energy intensive, compared to just cleaning and refilling, which is what is done to deposit bottles (at least here in Germany)
  - BoorishBears 7y ago
    That's not what's done when you deposit bottles in most automated "reverse-vending" machines in the US, it gets crushed/shredded then recycled off-site That being said, this article shows the German version of that, and it looks identical: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/30/has-germany-hit-the-jackpot-of-recycling-the-jurys-still-out https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/30/has-germany-hi... The action described also seems identical the the US version: >Almost all German supermarkets have sophisticated “reverse vending machines” that will weigh and scan your bottle to match against a list of acceptable shapes and sizes. >If your bottle is not on the retailer’s list, the machine spits the container back at you. If it matches, the bottle goes down a chute for either recycling or shredding, and the machine hands you a voucher with the added-up Pfand that you can then cash in at the till.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Are the deposits applied to the self-serve plastic cups? Also, I believe, the deposit on plastics should be higher than on cans. Recycling or not we should do more to discourage the use of plastics.
fortran77 7y ago
These people profiled aren't collecting litter. They're diverting an already well sorted and collected stream that should have gone to the City and stealing the revenue for themselves.

The 5 cent (or more) recycling deposit has always made sense to me as essentially a littering/co-mingling tax. Pay a little at purchase which funds the collection and proper disposal/recycling.

m-p-3 7y ago

Agreed, it pushes the purchaser to bring it back and also ensure the materials are triaged properly. If they don't, then someone else can collect the refund. If it was me I'd put the deposit to 10¢. More people would actually return them, and those who depends on it to make the ends meet wouldn't need to gather as much to make the same amount.

bobthepanda 7y ago
That would also probably be fair given that nickel deposits were mostly decided on decades ago. The first $.05 bottle deposit law was created in 1972. That would be equivalent to about $.30 today. That would be a much more compelling amount for a modern day citizen to recycle for.
onion2k 7y ago
It could be $10 and people renting $13500/month apartments still wouldn't take their cans and bottles back themselves.
- freeone3000 7y ago
  Right, but someone else would. Is the goal to teach a moral lesson, or to ensure cans get collected?
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Their loss? If they don't mind offloading that job to someone else and paying for it, then everyone is happy.
bloopernova 7y ago
Michigan's deposit is 10 cents per bottle/can. 97% of bottles and cans are recycled, even while Michigan's recycling rate of other materials is pretty low. Exactly what you described is what happens: If the purchaser doesn't recycle the cans, someone else will. Charities and other people will ask for cans to recycle, and some people will comb through trashcans to get a couple of bucks of empties.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  97% if you look at MI sales and MI returns, but how much of that is non-MI material being returned to MI? It sounds ridiculous, but there were even cases in Europe of « fake » bottles manufactured exclusively for getting a refund by the multi-million.

JCharante 7y ago

But it's such a small deposit. I'd rather see a $1 or $2 deposit to encourage more people to do their own recycling, to discourage single usage containers, which I think the US's culture would benefit from.

ars 7y ago
For $1 I'd be happy to make and ship bottles complete with authentic looking labels to you. i.e. if it wasn't obvious, that would have way too much fraud.
- tehlike 7y ago
  Reminds me of this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-1902 https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-190... When a measure becomes the target, it ceases to be a good measure.
- allovernow 7y ago
  That's an interesting point. I bet the price of plastic has gone down since the original value was chosen. I wonder what price point makes fraud economical on a large enough scale to attract someone with access to manufacturing...
- labster 7y ago
  Heck, even at 2.5 and 5 cents, California had a bottle recycling rate of 102% a few years back. Just bringing legit bottles across the border was a profitable activity until they started cracking down.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  That’s already happened: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/fraudster-made-1m-from-recycling-bottles-german-court-hears https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/fraudster-made...
gjs278 7y ago
that’s absurdly elitist of you to suggest this. the damage the cans cost us is not anywhere near a dollar either.

mdasen 7y ago

The article notes that the 5-cent deposit is hampering recycling rather than helping it. The Natural Resources Defense Council noted that expanding the bottle deposit would "punch a hole in the economic model of curbside recycling." That's because recyclers "want the good stuff, we want the metal and the good plastics." Whether a can is recycled by curbside pickup or by bringing it to a redemption center probably doesn't really matter environmentally. Curbside might have an advantage if they can more efficiently collect them (using less fuel and such). In this case, removing valuable recyclables like metal and good plastics from the curbside stream means making curbside recycling less valuable overall. It's transferring money from the city to the individuals collecting the cans. I'm definitely not faulting the people collecting the cans. They're trying to make ends meet in a city that can be tough. However, for the environment, the bottle deposit doesn't seem to be a tax that helps out recycling - it's a tax that hurts recycling. If the state expands the bottle deposit to include more bottles, it will remove more high-value recyclables from the curbside recycling stream. Those high-value recyclables subsidize the recycling of less valuable recyclables. That means that we lose the funding for a lot of our recycling. It's ultimately a poor use of human time to just be moving things around. Rather than entering the curbside stream and getting recycled, people do a lot of more labor so that they...get recycled. The end result is the same, but there's more human labor used, more fuel used, more costs paid, etc. And it makes curbside recycling of other items less economical.

namdnay 7y ago
What do you mean by recycling? Melting down the bottles to make “new” glass? That’s extremely energy intensive, compared to just cleaning and refilling, which is what is done to deposit bottles (at least here in Germany)
- BoorishBears 7y ago
  That's not what's done when you deposit bottles in most automated "reverse-vending" machines in the US, it gets crushed/shredded then recycled off-site That being said, this article shows the German version of that, and it looks identical: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/30/has-germany-hit-the-jackpot-of-recycling-the-jurys-still-out https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/30/has-germany-hi... The action described also seems identical the the US version: >Almost all German supermarkets have sophisticated “reverse vending machines” that will weigh and scan your bottle to match against a list of acceptable shapes and sizes. >If your bottle is not on the retailer’s list, the machine spits the container back at you. If it matches, the bottle goes down a chute for either recycling or shredding, and the machine hands you a voucher with the added-up Pfand that you can then cash in at the till.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

Are the deposits applied to the self-serve plastic cups? Also, I believe, the deposit on plastics should be higher than on cans. Recycling or not we should do more to discourage the use of plastics.

fortran77 7y ago

These people profiled aren't collecting litter. They're diverting an already well sorted and collected stream that should have gone to the City and stealing the revenue for themselves.