No more glass beer bottles!!!!!!!

I don't need to go to Europe to get my tall cans of Topvar. The government liquor store holds two flats aside for me each and every week I had maybe one bad can in the last four years. The beer is excellent, and nothing produced in Canada comes remotely close...

-'dreas

In fact, I have yet to find anything in the world to come close...

No. The deposit system does work. It works here in South Aust. and it seems to work in NY (previous poster). In hand with the deposit system, you need very stiff littering fines and you need to educate the public about litter problems. Adelaide is practically litter free. It didn't come about overnight, it's taken years but it did work in the long term. (Adelaide pop. approx 1.2 mil) Steve W.

And what motivates people to make the effort to recycle? In NY people make a living going around and grabbing carelessly discarded bottles. Maybe you have wonderful people who worry about recycling for the environmental joy of it, but bottle deposits work for the rest of us.

All you need to do is look at the litter, no deposit on bottled water, and people drop them where they become empty. Rarely happens with deposit bottles, and when it does someone will salvage them.

I guess CA poor have too much moeny to bother scavenging bottles for the deposit. Sure works in NY.

See, what motivates people is the total lack of effort it takes. We don't have to separate, we don't have to clean. We just dump everything -- glass, steel, aluminum, 1 & 2 recyclable plastics -- in the green bin and put it out on the curb on Mondays. Done. Gone. The only hassle is putting them in the bin instead of the can. Making it easy -- truly easy -- works as well here as making it profitable does elsewhere. Just telling you what works here...and I don't have to pay a deposit. Our recycling program covers over

60% of its costs, the rest is paid by property taxes, and we consider the service we get on garbage and recycling some of the best-spent bucks in our property taxes.

~ > ~ > ~ >>Put a 5 or 10c deposit on beer bottles and for that matter, on all soft ~ >>drink containers also. You wont have a beverage litter problem any more - ~ >>guaranteed. ~ > ~ > ~ > Do you offer any money back with that guarnatee? Because a drive down the ~ > 710 freeway this morning was ample proof that California's deposits don't do ~ > jack shit about preventing a litter problem. ~ ~ I guess CA poor have too much moeny to bother scavenging bottles for the ~ deposit. Sure works in NY.

Do the NY poor get the deposit money for glass shards from bottles busted all over the street?

I don't really care so much about nice intact bottles lying around; it's the broken glass everywhere that I could do with out.

Lew,

No, bottle bills do not suck, they work. When they instituted the bottle bill in Delaware in the arly 1980's there was a large reduction in broken glass bottles along the roads. Good thing for a cyclist.

Here in Arlington, VA we have enough knutnicks that put whatever into their recycling bin. That causes the recycler to trash an entire load because it is contaminated.

Anyway, what is your address and garbage pickup day? I would love to see all of the bottles in your bin.

Art, I have to disagree. Having lived in bottle bill states (California and Connecticut) and living here now, I prefer comprehensive curbside recycling, and it appears to work pretty well here, or at least in Middletown Township. Bottle bills are a pain in my neck, recycling is easier than hell. I've had bins rejected twice, and each time I learned what it was that had caused it, and didn't put that back in. I guess that makes me trainable.

Heh. I do find myself checking out other peoples' bins to see who's drinking good stuff.

I always wonder if the pick-up guys appreciate the great variety in my bin after dozens of bins with the same red and white or silver cans in them.

I admit to being embarassed on occasion-- like after hosting a beer tasting-- when the bin is overflowing with beer bottles. But at least they're all *good* beer bottles.

"Lew Bryson" wrote in news:%sVge.1960$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com:

I sort of enjoy taking out the recycling bin, as it winds up being a review of the week in beer. "Hey, that Allagash Tripel I had on Sunday was great. Oooh, and the two bottles of Maudite from Tuesday. That was a good night."

Ditto.

California's deposit law does not encourage me to go return my bottles. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't (it doesn't help that the vast majority of stores do not make it easy to return bottles). Most of the time I just put them in the trash.

I just got back from my bother's wedding in Minneapolis last week. Hennepin County (and Ramsey, which is the St. Paul side) both have curbside recycling. I pretty much never saw bottles, cans, plastic, etc. lying around. Because it's easy just to drop stuff off at the curb. And it's easy just to drop the items in a different bin from the regular trash.

In contrast, deposit systems require me to do the work. Yeah, it's not much, but I'm a fundamentally lazy person - as are most people. I have to gather up my bottles, find something I can carry them in, carry them out to my car, drive to whatever store will take them, and for all that effort walk away with 2 bucks. By the time it's done, I've wasted more money on a time basis then I gained in returning the bottles.

I return bottles when I can, more for environmental concerns than monetary. But I'm quite simply not going to bust my ass to do so, or take up half the storage space in my apartment with empties. Make it easy for people to recycle, and most will. In my experience, curbside makes it loads easier for people to do so than deposit laws.

As an aside, I love the blanket assertions that "bottle bills work" even when people can point to cases where they're clearly not. Do they improve things? Sure. But do they "work"? Depends on how one defines "work." There are clearly cases where they don't.

-Steve

This is the heart of it, why curbside works so well. It's easy. Easy works.

Just had a great experience with this. I was writing a piece for New Brewer on keg registration, and talked to the former head of Business Practices with the California ABC (or whatever the booze acronym is in Calif., I can't remember all of them) about the keg reg in their state.

"Dave Wright seemed pleased with California's law, but for puzzling reasons. "As far as I know, it's been very successful," he said. "We haven't had any problem enforcing it. We've had administrative punishments for retailers who are not in compliance. We check to see if they're keeping adequate records."

"But when Wright was asked if the actual aim of the law had been achieved, he had a disturbing response. "I can't say if underage drinking has gone down," he said. Asked about the indications that keg registration merely shift alcohol purchases in other directions, he was equally non-plussed. "I don't have a response to that," he repeated. "We don't, per se, have anyone who could help you with that.""

So...does the law work? HA!