'Bottle bill' supporters lobby for 5-cent deposit
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief
Supporters of a plan to impose a nickel deposit on all plastic, glass and metal drink containers sold in Hawai'i staged a major push yesterday at the Legislature, packing a House hearing room to press for passage of the so-called "bottle bill."
An overflow crowd of supporters and some critics testified before the House Finance Committee, with about 200 backers of the bottle bill submitting e-mails and a thick stack of testimony urging lawmakers to adopt the measure.
Roland Halpern, an insurance agent who works on South Street, displayed for the committee a bag stuffed with a half-dozen cans, a bottle and a plastic soft drink container he collected on his five-block walk yesterday from work to the Capitol.
Halpern said he was inspired by his 4-year-old son to press for the bill to reduce litter.
"I want to leave him a better Hawai'i than I found," Halpern said.
With 800 million beverage containers imported into the state each year, an average of 75,000 bottles and cans are thrown away every hour, said Jeff Mikulina, director of the Sierra Club Hawai'i Chapter.
Critics of the bottle bill, including food and beverage industry, lobbyists charged it would impose a new $26 million "tax" on Hawai'i consumers.
Gary Yoshioka, spokesman for a food and beverage industry organization called Hawai'i Citizens for Comprehensive Recycling, said the industry has proposed a plan of its own that would cause three times as much material to be recycled at one-quarter of the cost of the bottle bill.
"Since soft drink containers make up less than 1 percent of the solid waste stream, this is an expensive approach that does little to promote recycling or to solve the litter problem," said Ed Thompson of the Hawai'i Food Industry Association.
The House Finance Committee deferred action on the bill last night, but House Finance Committee Chairman Dwight Takamine said he expects some version of the bill will emerge from his committee.
The bill discussed last night, Senate Bill 2266, would impose two separate charges that would increase the cost of most containers by a total of 7 cents.
A 2-cent, non-refundable charge for each container would be imposed on the companies that import drink containers. The state already imposes a charge of 1.5 cents on glass containers; the fee would increase to 2 cents for most glass containers.
A 5-cent refundable deposit would be imposed on consumers on beverage containers of 64 ounces or less. The deposit would not be imposed on containers sold for on-premises consumption, such as in a bar.
A spokesman for the state Health Department estimated the charges would collect about $56 million, with about $32 million refunded to people who returned containers. Unrefunded money could be used only to support recycling.
The program would go into effect Oct 1, 2003.
Supporting the bill were representatives of Honolulu and the Neighbor Island county governments, along with the state Department of Health and environmental groups such as Hawai'i's Thousand Friends and Sierra Club.
Mikulina of the Sierra Club said the limited recycling programs in place today aren't doing enough to reduce the flow of rubbish into the state's landfills, but programs on the Mainland show bottle bills prompt recycling of 80 percent of beverage containers.
The bottle bill still must win the approval of the full House and Senate, and it isn't clear yet if that will be possible. House and Senate lawmakers approved a similar bottle bill last year, House Bill 1256, but that measure stalled in the final days of last year's session.
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.
