Opinion: Iowa bottle bill needs its modernization this year
Throughout the 1970s I was raised on our family’s dairy farm at the south edge of Waterloo, and the gravel road ditches next to our home were filled with litter, primarily pop cans and beer bottles. Then in 1978 Democratic legislators in Iowa passed "the bottle bill," which was signed into law by Republican Gov. Robert Ray. It was a bipartisan attempt to improve Iowa’s environment for both the short and long term.
Iowa’s bottle bill was a model of simplicity. At the point of purchase, each consumer would pay 5 cents for each bottle or can, and then recapture that 5 cents when returning their cans and bottles to wherever their purchase was made.
When the bottle bill was fully implemented in 1979, the impact was immediate and dramatic. Ditches and waterways once filled with litter were suddenly cleaned up, and the Department of Natural Resources estimates that 79% of the litter previously fouling Iowa’s ditches and roads disappeared in just one year!
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The effectiveness of the bottle bill over the past 43 years is not in dispute. Over 1 billion bottles and cans are redeemed each year in Iowa, and the Iowa Recycling Association estimates over 48 billion cans and bottles have been redeemed since the bottle bill was implemented.
The bottle bill is also extremely popular. A 2017 poll conducted by J. Ann Selzer found 88% of active Iowa voters believe the bottle bill has been good for the state. Support is found among Iowans of all ages and political persuasions.
The "bottle bill" has been the single most positive and impactful environmental law enacted in Iowa during the past 50 years. But it’s not perfect. Over the decades several weaknesses have emerged:
The original bottle bill covered only alcoholic and carbonated beverages, but since 1979 many popular drinks such as bottled water, sports drinks, flavored teas, etc. have become huge sellers. Only 26% of these containers are being recycled, and over 20 tons of them end up in our landfills each year.
The 5-cent deposit doesn’t provide the same financial incentive for consumers to return their containers as it did in 1979. If the bottle deposit would have kept up with inflation, the deposit on each container would now be at least 17 cents.
Retailers and redemption centers are currently only paid 1 cent for handling each returned container, and this does not reflect decades of increased labor costs.
The COVID-19 pandemic created an additional challenge for the bottle bill when Gov. Kim Reynolds ordered that grocery stores no longer needed to accept returned containers. Even though this order was lifted over 18 months ago, many grocery store chains continue to reject containers that they sell. Waterloo, with 65,000 residents, is served by only one redemption center. Sometimes it’s open, sometimes it’s not. Enforcement of the bottle bill and its rules appears to be non-existent.
More: Opinion: Plans to modify bottle bill go in the wrong direction
The result from this mismanagement is predictable and discouraging: Redemption of cans and bottles dropped to a record low 71% in 2018, and it’s undoubtedly even lower now.
The good news is that all these problems are well documented, well understood, and solutions are within easy reach. The bad news is Republican legislators and Reynolds haven’t been able to bring wholesale distributors, retailers, consumer and environmental groups together to modernize Iowa’s bottle bill so that it functions as well as it did 15 years ago.
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If our bottle bill isn’t updated soon, Iowans will get out of the habit of redeeming their containers, and Iowa’s environment will return to the mess it was 45 years ago. It’s not too late to salvage Iowa’s bottle bill, but legislators need to act soon. With a few modernization steps, the bottle bill could once again become a model for the Midwest:
Expand the bottle bill to include non-carbonated drinks such as bottled water, sports drinks and flavored teas not covered by the original law.
Increase the deposit to 10 cents per bottle/can.
Increase the handling fee paid to retailers and redemption centers.
Require all grocery stores and retailers to immediately resume accepting bottle and can returns, and establish strict state enforcement standards.
The success or failure of Iowa’s bottle bill lays firmly within control of Reynolds and Republican legislators who control Iowa’s government. If you want to keep Iowa’s roads, waters, ditches and landfills from filling up with billions of bottles and cans, contact them and remind them of their responsibility to you as a conscientious consumer.
Dennis Harbaugh is a Waterloo resident and former director of the Iowa Senate Democratic Research staff.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: Bottle bill needs to be modernized this year
