Breaking the Bottleneck

Finally there is hope that government has found a way to coax Californians into keeping empty cans and bottles off the sand and grass of their beaches and parks.

The cause for the hope is Assembly Bill 2020, sponsored by Assemblyman Burt M. Margolin (D-North Hollywood) and amended in ways that call a truce in the years-long war between the beverage industry and environmentalists over using deposits on cans and bottles as an incentive to turn them in when they are empty.

The bill would work this way: Wholesalers would pay a penny per container into a special fund, adding the penny to the price of each container. Consumers would get their penny back by turning the cans and bottles in at redemption centers; they would also get the going rate for empty containers--for aluminum beer cans, a penny each. Recyclers would get back the extra penny that they paid out from the state recycling fund that got the penny from the producers. No one would lose money, and the payoff could be less litter.

Because Californians are Falstaffian quaffers of beer, pop and mineral water, the state fund would be expected to take in $120 billion a year. Because a penny might not provide sufficient incentive to guarantee the return of every container, the fund should show a surplus every year.

A new 17-member Beverage Regulation Commission, authorized to distribute the entire sum, could use the surplus to provide an extra incentive --for example, 2-cent bonus paybacks during the summer, when litter tends to pile up.

The commission also would license redemption centers, although that would not prevent stores from giving their customers a break by accepting the containers and turning them over to the centers.

Beverage laws already work in nine states; consumers there get a nickel for each bottle or can returned to any store selling the beer or soda. A nickel is five times as strong an incentive as a penny, but the beverage industry has had too much power in Sacramento for that approach to succeed.

Recycling would save money spent on litter collection, reduce the energy needed to produce containers from scratch and probably reduce litter. Admittedly, the approach is as complicated as an old Rube Goldberg cartoon and second-best to a simple exchange of a nickel for a can or a bottle. But second-best is all that the Legislature seems capable of, and the amended version of AB 2020 deserves passage. A penny is a small price to pay for a cleaner California.