Posted on: Wednesday, October 2, 2002
State begins collecting deposit fees for bottles
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
Hawai'i moved a step closer to a bottle-deposit program yesterday, as the state imposed a small fee on manufacturers and importers of beverage containers.
Those businesses now must pay the state a half-cent for each plastic or metal beverage container brought into, or made in, the state. That money will be used for administrative costs and to build up the fund that will repay consumers when they start paying 5-cent bottle deposits on Jan. 1, 2005.
The new half-cent fee is projected to cost distributors $4.8 million a year, said Ed Thompson, executive director of the Hawaii Food Industry Association. The refund pool will be $6.5 million by Jan. 1, 2005, said Gary Gill, deputy director of the Department of Health.
Glass containers already are covered by an existing 1 1/2-cent fee.
Meanwhile, consumers probably will start seeing increased beverage prices soon, Thompson said.
"It's going to result in higher prices, starting today," Thompson said, although he couldn't predict how much prices would increase.
Gill and representatives of the beverage and recycling industries in a state advisory group met yesterday to discuss rules of operating the redemption centers and other aspects of the program.
Once consumers actually start collecting beverage containers and recycling them, the program's monthly operating cost is estimated to reach about $4.5 million, Gill said. This includes about $2.6 million in deposit payments to consumers, about $1 million in fees to recyclers and $1 million to operate state recycling centers that would be needed if the private sector doesn't step in to operate them, he added.
The half-cent fee is going to rise to a penny per container on Oct. 1, 2004.
Thompson said that since 1994 the industry has been paying the state a 1 1/2-cent-per-bottle "glass advance disposal fee" for glass recycling; that fee will remain in effect until 2004, when it will drop to a penny, he said.
