Assembly Recycles State’s Bottle Law

Rushing to avert a shutdown of hundreds of supermarket recycling centers, the state Assembly passed a measure Friday that will keep California’s bottle law alive for another year.

The emergency legislation, approved 61 to 1 with little debate, allows supermarket bottle redemption centers to stay in business by reinstating a state subsidy that operators insist is essential to keep many of them financially afloat.

The subsidy and several other provisions in the 13-year-old law expired Jan. 1, after former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed legislation that revamped the program and increased the deposit for certain large beverage containers.

The new bill, which passed the state Senate in December and is expected to be signed by Wilson’s Democratic successor, Gray Davis, maintains the status quo and gives the Legislature a year to come up with a another reform plan.

“All [the bill] does is extend everything for another year and give everybody a chance to negotiate with the new administration on a plan for improving the program,” said Joe Massey, owner of Massey Management Co., an Orange County-based consultant to the recycling industry.

Mark Murray, a lobbyist for Californians Against Waste, the state’s leading recycling advocacy group, said the measure prevents a crisis in the recycling industry by maintaining the up to $2,000 monthly subsidy paid to some supermarket redemption centers.

He said the subsidy ensures convenience for consumers by guaranteeing enough centers in urban areas.

“We were concerned that the [former] governor’s veto was going to cause hundreds of recycling centers to close down, [but] I’ve never seen a bill move like this one did,” he said.

The new bill allows the state to pay the subsidy retroactive to Jan. 1. The subsidies come from a fund created by unredeemed deposits.

California’s recycling program, the only one of its kind in the nation, requires a deposit on beer and soft drinks contained in aluminum, plastic and glass containers. Consumers pay 2 1/2 cents on small containers and 5 cents on larger ones.

To redeem their deposits, consumers must return bottles and cans to recycling centers, either at supermarket sites or scrap yards.

In recent years, the program has been plagued by inequities and inefficiencies, but attempts to fix the problems have always been defeated by squabbles among the various stakeholders in the industry--soft drink companies, retail grocery stores, supermarket recycling centers, wine and liquor interests, can and bottle manufacturers and scrap yard recyclers.

The program’s most glaring inconsistency is the kind of beverages it covers. Aluminum cans of beer or soft drinks such as Pepsi, for example, carry a deposit, but those containing iced tea do not. Noncarbonated sport drinks in plastic bottles are deposit-free; carbonated ones are not.

By limiting the extension of the program to a year, Murray said, legislators have put environmentalists in a good position to demand that the program be expanded to additional beverages.

Indeed, industry lobbyists said Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) and Sen. Byron Sher (D-Stanford) have already advised them that they will propose legislation mirroring that vetoed by Wilson, but it will also expand the program to cover more beverages, including tea, sport drinks and bottled water.

He said environmentalists estimate that the inclusion of the other drinks would mean an additional 150,000 tons of metal, plastic and glass would be recycled in California each year. The program currently recycles 600,000 tons of those materials.

“From our perspective that’s an important expansion,” he said.