Dive Brief:
- Texas legislators are considering creating a bottle bill for the state, ostensibly to decrease waste and litter and to increase recycling. Those favoring the would-be law say it will lower the amount of glass, aluminum and plastic drink containers put in landfills and tossed as litter all over the state.
- If it is made law, the Texas bottle bill would cost five to 10 cents per container, while creating jobs and pushing recycling, proponents said. Opponents claimed the bill would basically be a "tax" in rural areas with little recycling. On Tuesday, Texas’s state House Environmental Regulation Committee listened to testimony on Bill 2425, but did not take action and tabled it.
- The bill is different from all other bottle bills in the country, said Richard Abramowitz, a consultant for bottle bill advocate Texans for Clean Water. “There is no retailer take back or distributor take back requirement. It creates a free market for the creation of redemption centers. And it’s a program that will be run by a nonprofit consortium with industry involved,” he said.
Dive Insight:
One piece that is interesting here is the proposed system through which the bottle law would work: A nonprofit consortium to run it? It sounds potentially cumbersome, and costly.