Investors pushing recycling
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Staff Writer
The state's beverage industry persuaded this year's Legislature to block passage of the bottle bill, but many bottling firms are facing pro-recycling challenges in their own ranks.
Both Coke and Pepsi, at shareholders meetings this year, faced shareholder resolutions demanding the companies support container-deposit legislation.
"Coke and Pepsi shareholders are calling on company management to take responsibility for billions of bottles and cans wasted rather than recycled every year," said Bill Sheehan of the GrassRoots Recycling Network (see www.grrn.org).
The majority of shares were voted against the resolutions at each company's meeting, but the companies face thorny problems as major money management firms step in with socially driven agendas.
Walden Asset Management of Boston and Domini Social Investments of New York were among the supporters of the resolutions at both bottling companies.
The measures called on the firms to back bottle bills, to set recycling goals and to meet them by 2005.
Walden, on its Web site, www.waldenassetmgmt.com, makes the case: "Beverage container recovery rates declined from 50 percent in 1994 to 35 percent in 1999. In the 10 states with container-deposit systems ... beverage container recovery and recycling rates average 80 percent."
At Pepsi, 83 million shares were voted in favor the resolution, but that represented just 8 percent of the company's stock. At Coke, 89 million shares were voted for the resolution, or about 10 percent of the stock. In both cases, company management urged shareholders to reject the recycling initiatives.
"Investors have engaged Coca-Cola management in a substantive dialogue about these problems over the past year, but the company would not agree to commit publicly to recycling goals," said Conrad MacKerron, director of the corporate accountability program at San Francisco's As You Sow Foundation.
In Hawai'i, proponents of container-recycling legislation said there is no technique that gets higher recycling rates than deposit legislation.
But the industry argued that while it supports recycling and litter control, the deposits could increase the costs of doing business, could cut into sales, and do not address recycling of items other than beverage containers.
The Hawai'i soft drink, liquor and food distribution industry this year committed itself to producing a study on ways to improve overall recycling rates without a bottle bill. It is to be completed by the opening of next year's Legislature.
Meanwhile, a new environmental movement is calling for even an more radical concept: recycling everything. The idea is called "zero waste." Learn more at www.zerowasteamerica.org.
Jan TenBruggencate is The Advertiser's Kaua'i Bureau Chief and its science and environment writer. You can reach him by e-mail at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.
