Compromise ‘Bottle Bill’ May End 20-Year Legislative Fight

A Southern California legislator announced Monday that a delicate compromise has been reached on an anti-litter bill to end the 20-year-old, multimillion-dollar fight over making a refundable deposit mandatory on beer and soft drink containers.

Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) disclosed the agreement at a press conference attended by a wide-ranging coalition of interests that have been fighting over the so-called “bottle bill” issue since 1965.

‘Important New Incentive’

The participants included environmentalists and representatives of the soft drink, beer, packaging, and retailing industries. Margolin said later, however, that some segments of organized labor have not endorsed the proposal.

A spokesman for Gov. George Deukmejian said he has no position on the proposal because he had not seen the compromise version.

“For the first time anywhere,” Margolin told reporters, “consumers who return the beverage container they purchased to a recycling center will receive more money back than they paid (for the container) at the store. This consumer recycling profit creates an important new incentive for people to take the matter of cleaning up beverage litter seriously.”

In brief, the compromise calls for the creation of a state-regulated recycling program for all aluminum, glass and plastic containers of beer and soft drinks sold in California after Jan. 1, 1987.

Distributors would pay 1 cent per container into a recycling fund and would pass the cost on to consumers.

Consumers who returned the empty containers to recycling centers, including larger grocery stores set up to handle them, would be paid up to 2 cents per container.

The additional penny would come from the scrap value of the container and uncollected deposits.

A 2-cent deposit would be required after Dec. 31, 1990, for containers that have not achieved a 65% return rate. This would be implemented as an inducement to turn them in.

Margolin said the new system “is the product of some of the most creative people from both industry and the environmental community sitting down together for the first time ever to apply their talents to solving the litter problem--not beating an adversary.”

‘Reasonably Confident’

He amended the compromise into a bill that would have required a minimum 5-cent refundable deposit on beer and soft drink containers. The bill was placed on the Assembly’s inactive shelf last June because of a lack of favorable votes.

In its compromise form, the bill cleared its first test Monday evening when the Assembly Ways and Means Committee approved it in a 14-1 vote and sent it to the floor.

Margolin said he is “reasonably confident” that he can get the revised bill out of the Assembly and the Senate and place it on Deukmejian’s desk. If he does, it will be the first time such a measure has cleared either house of the Legislature.

Bills to require a minimum 5-cent deposit on beer and soft drink containers perished with regularity from 1965 to 1982, usually after bitter battles.

Proponents of container laws, citing the success and popularity of similar bills in Oregon and eight other states, have long argued that container laws would reduce the state’s roadside litter problem, lower the ultimate cost of beverages to consumers and increase jobs for grocery clerks and checkers.

Opponents contend the bills would yield only a modest decrease in roadside trash, increase beverage costs to consumers and eliminate jobs in the container manufacturing industry.

In 1982, a ballot initiative to establish the minimum 5-cent returnable deposit was defeated, 56% to 44%.

Among the groups supporting the new compromise are Californians Against Waste, Citizens for Voluntary Recycling, the Planning and Conservation League, California Grocers Assn., California Beer Wholesalers Assn., California Soft Drink Bottlers Assn., California Retailers Assn. and the U.S. Brewers Assn.

Margolin admitted that he has “some problems” with segments of organized labor, but he said discussions to win them over are continuing.

Two other environmental groups, the California Public Interest Research Group and Environmental Action Inc., are opposed. “The deposit is not high enough or visible enough to the consumer to provide an incentive to return the container,” said Robert M. Shireman of the public interest research group.