LAWMAKERS REOPEN BOTTLE BILL.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

SALEM - It's both an icon and a relic. A hallmark of one generation's innovative ways and another's inaction.

The Bottle Bill, enacted in 1971, has been copied by 10 other states, including California. But while many states have adopted more modern versions that apply to the kinds of beverages people drink these days, Oregon's continues to cover only soda pop and beer.

On Tuesday, lawmakers launched their latest effort to update the law that has become part of Oregon's identity.

"I just think it's part of being an Oregonian that you return your bottles and cans," said Sen. Peter Courtney, D-Salem. "This is about who we are as a people. Heart and soul."

Courtney was one of several top lawmakers to testify before the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee on Senate Bill 481, which he and Sen. Joanne Verger, D-Coos Bay, sponsored. It's one of several Bottle Bill expansion ideas floating around this session.

Senate Bill 481 would expand the types of containers covered by Oregon's Bottle Bill law. Currently, only the recycling of bottles and cans for beer, pop and other carbonated beverages is regulated by the law. The bill would expand the law's coverage to any sealed glass, metal or plastic bottle, can or jar that holds more than 7 fluid ounces and less than 1 gallon.

The deposit, now a nickel for each carbonated drink container, would rise to a dime.

The bill also creates a Beverage Product Stewardship Board, made up of seven members appointed by the governor. It would oversee various aspects of bottle and can recycling now overseen by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. The board's duties would include the certification of "redemption centers" throughout the state to accept returned containers.

Oregon's original Bottle Bill was passed with the help of then-Gov. Tom McCall, who championed it as a major achievement in the ecology movement of the early 1970s.

Before the issue became part of McCall's legacy, it was the pet peeve of an Oregon outdoorsman named Richard Chamberlain, who had become disgusted with the discarded soda bottles and rusty beer cans that littered roadsides, trailheads and riverbanks.

A generation later, his daughter, Rep. Vicki Berger, R-Salem, testified in favor of updating the concept in an age when recycling and curbing greenhouse gases have trumped the fight against litter.

Berger rhetorically asked the Senate committee what had changed since 1971 and then answered the question by plopping down on the witness table a bottle of drinking water.

"That's my problem, all of our problem," said Berger, who urged her colleagues to "make this the year we bring our Bottle Bill into the current century."

The recycling rate for beer and soft drink containers covered by Oregon's Bottle Bill was 83 percent in 2005, while the rate was 36 percent for other types of drink cans and bottles, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.

In 1998, an initiative expanding the bottle bill drew 40 percent support from Oregon voters. The grocery and beverage industries spent big money to defeat the measure and have lobbied against moves in the Legislature to expand the Bottle Bill.

Joe Gilliam, president of the Oregon Grocery Association, said the latest proposal won't work either. Encouraging consumers to bring back refillable drink bottles already is a difficult fit for grocery stores, which he said are at their capacity to handle recycling.

But he said industry groups such as his don't want simply to fight the bill so that another plan can surface later.

"We all realize there's a need to keep rigid plastic containers out of landfills," said Gilliam, who said he will encourage lawmakers to consider an alternative approach. Adopted in a handful of East Coast cities, the proposal would shift recycling from grocery stores to the curbside. All recyclables would be co-mingled in pushcarts bearing a unique scannable code for each customer. The truck that hauls off the contents would weigh the recyclables - from newspapers and cardboard to milk jugs and soda bottles - and credit each customer a dollar value based on how much he set out.

Sybil Ackerman, legislative director for the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, said the state's data on recycling rates through curbside programs and through the Bottle Bill approach made her skeptical about the grocery lobby's plan.

"We feel like the best place for recycling is in the grocery stores and not at the curbside," Ackerman said.

NEW TWIST ON BOTTLE BILL

Recycling rates for various types of containers in 2005. In parentheses are the state Department of Environmental Quality's projected rates for containers if they were covered by an expanded Bottle Bill:

Beer/soft drinks: 83 percent (same)

Water: 33 percent (68 percent)

Juice, tea, other: 28 percent (66 percent)

All combined: 71 percent (80 percent)