Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Is it time to update the Bottle Bill?

I believe it is for the following reasons:
  • The Massachusetts Bottle Bill went into effect nearly 26 years ago and was primarily aimed at beer and soda containers. At that time, non-carbonated beverages were exempt.
  • These days, much of the soda has been replaced by non-carbonated beverages such as spring water, flavored water, vitamin water, and juice drinks in containers that have no refund value. These non-carbonated containers need to be included. Hopefully, one of the spring water/sport drink manufacturers will step up and support such a measure. How about it Aquafina, Dasani, Poland Springs, Evian, Nestle, Gatorade, Glaceau, Sunny Delight? Would any one of you want to be proactive?
  • The five cent refund value is no longer adequate to encourage people to redeem containers and needs to be increased to a dime.

Presently, recycling and environmental groups are working towards making such changes to the Bottle Bill. More information is available here:

http://www.environmentmassachusetts.org/reduce-reuse-recycle/update-the-bottle-bill

Perhaps, this old promo would help the way it did in the 1970s:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8165024777546661764

That birchbark canoe in the old promo might have been made by this fellow:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/13/eveningnews/main4600840.shtml?tag=rightRail;rightRailInner

1 comment:

Bill Hester said...

Very nice blog for a good cause. Used to live in Bedford and at Hanscom when my dad was stationed there. Went fishing with him on the Concord at the bridge several times. Keep up the good work and thanks for the postings.