Tennessee Bottle Bill | Tennessee Scenic Rivers Association

The 2009 Tennessee Bottle Bill
Needs Your Support!

Dr. Marge Davis, Ph.D., who is the Coordinator of the Pride of Place/Tennessee Bottle Bill Project, and TSRA need your help in securing the bottle bill for Tennessee. Dr. Davis has the following good news to announce in her latest report:

Pride of Place (POP)

The litter & recycling solution based on a 5¢ Tennessee container deposit

Dear Friends:

I've given up on my effort to use cool e-mail stationery. We've got more important things to focus on. Like . . . VICTORY!

For once I'm not going to go on and on and on. I'm just going to give you a handful of action items (along with the usual list of key features) and ask you to pour your hearts out for these last few hours before Tuesday's all-important Senate Environment Committee hearing.

Action items:

PLEASE COME TO THE HEARING TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT! The Senate Environment Committee convenes Tuesday (April 7) in Room 12 of Legislative Plaza, corner of 6th and Union in downtown Nashville. Start time is 11 a.m. rather than 11:30. Our bill (SB 1404) is next to last on the agenda, so it probably will be 11:30 before they get to it.

Note: There is no House hearing on April 8. This will likely happen on April 15, IF the bill passes out of committee on Tuesday. Plan to come to that, too.

Know any FARMERS?? If so, send me their contact info, asap. We need a farmer to testify on Tuesday. This is planting season, and none of our usual farmer-supporters is available.

Got any great images of litter? If so, e-mail them to me, and I'll put them in a slide show to be aired at Tuesday's hearing. If we are going to survive the opposition's efforts to kill the bill by putting it into a "summer study committee," we need to remind them that a container deposit does as much about litter as it is about recycling. The opposition bills do nothing to address litter. (And they do little, realistically, about recycling.)

Continue to
- work your networks
- e-mail the governor: phil.bredesen@state.tn.us
- contact committee members if you haven't already done so (see list below), especially chairman Steve Southerland

Key features:

The bottle bill will dramatically and permanently reduce TN's litter, roughly half of which is bottles and cans. The 11 states with bottle bills found that overall litter dropped by an average of almost 40% within a few years of passage, and container-only litter dropped by as much as 80%.

This year's bill imposes NO NEW COST on the beverage distributors. Under an amendment that will be voted on on Tuesday, beverage distributors will pay only a "container-recovery fee" of 1/8 cent, which works out almost exactly to what they now pay in "litter taxes" to fund inmate litter crews and Keep Tennessee Beautiful. Funding for these programs will now come out of the bottle-bill revenues.

Empty containers do NOT get returned to the grocery store under this bill. Returns are to any of hundreds of independent businesses known as certified redemption centers. These may be owned by individuals, businesses, scrap yards, local governments and nonprofit agencies.

Redemption centers make a living by (1) selling the container scrap to local scrap dealers or end-users; and (2) receiving a handling fee of 1 cent per container, which is paid out of the accrued unclaimed deposits.

Redemption centers may, if acceptable to the local government and the local recycling infrastructure, also accept non-deposit items such as cardboard, newspaper and pickle jars.

The bill is endorsed by the Tennessee Association of County Mayors.

Manufacturers prefer bottle-bill scrap not only because it gets collected in such high quantities--the national average is 80%--but because it's properly sorted by material and color, and with none of the cross-contamination, foreign materials and low volumes that tend to plague drop-off and curbside recycling programs.

For the first time in history, all three of the major container-commodity trade groups--the Aluminum Association, the Glass Packaging Institute and the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers--now support container deposits.

In addition to recovering $50 million or more of scrap each year, this bill will save landfill space, reduce collection and hauling costs, save 1.5 million barrels of crude oil a year and avoid 150,000 metric tonnes of greenhouse gases.

Senate Environment, Conservation and Tourism Committee members:

Sen. Tim Barnes	D-22	Cheatham, Houston, Montgomery	305 WMB	741-2374
Sen. Charlotte Burks	D-15	Cumberland, Jackson, Overton, Pickett, Putnam, White	304 WMB	741-3978
Sen. Mike Faulk	R-4	Claiborne, Grainger, Hancock, Hawkins, Jefferson, Union	11A LP	741-2061
Sen. Doug Jackson SPONSOR	D-25	Dickson, Giles, Hickman, Humphreys, Lawrence, Lewis		741-4499
Sen. Jack Johnson	R-23	Williamson & part of Davidson	10A LP	741-2495
Sen. Steve Southerland CHAIR	R-1	Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Unicoi	10 LP	741-3851
Sen. Eric Stewart	D-14	Franklin, Bledsoe, Coffee, Grundy, Sequatchie, Van Buren, Warren	310A WMB	741-6694
Sen. Jamie Woodson	R-6	Knox	6 LP	741-1648
Sen. Ken Yager	R-12	Campbell, Fentress, Morgan, Rhea, Roane, Scott	3 LP	741-1449

Think positive!

Marge Davis, Ph.D.
Coordinator
Pride of Place/Tennessee Bottle Bill Project
A Project of Scenic Tennessee, Inc.
45 Burris Court
Mt. Juliet, TN 37122
home (615) 758-8647
fax (615) 754-0966
cell (615) 294-2651
www.tnbottlebill.org
margedavis@comcast.net

The Tennessee Beverage Container Recycling Act

1. VITAL STATISTICS

The bill number is SB1404 and HB1167. You can see it at http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/; type in either of the bill numbers in the search box called "Find Legislation." IMPORTANT NOTE: An amendment has been filed that reduces the distributors' fee to 1/8¢ (we started out at 1¢), but as of this morning it has not yet appeared on the website.

Prime sponsors are again Sen. Doug Jackson and Rep. Mike Turner; cosponsors (so far) are Sen. Beverly Marrero, Sen. Randy McNally, Rep. Ben West, Jr., and Rep. Jim Coley. We expect that all of last year's other cosponsors will sign on as well, once we get the sign-on forms to them. If you have a moment, please drop these folks a thank-you e-mail.

2. BEST BOTTLE BILL EVER!

I know I say this every year, but this time I absolutely mean it. This year's bill:

· Places no new cost on beverage distributors

· Will generate hundreds of small businesses ("redemption centers")

· Will create as many as 2,000 new jobs

· Has the support of major industries and industry trade groups

· Will eventually recover 85% of 4.5 billion containers a year, compared to 10% now

· Will create access to recycling even in rural areas

· Will dramatically reduce litter while preserving the existing litter grants program

· Will keep 200,000+ tons of valuable container material out of landfills

· Will save local governments millions in waste-hauling and landfill tipping costs

· Will avoid the equivalent of 150,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases

· Will save enough energy to power 85,000 homes for a year

· Will create job training, jobs and income opportunity for nonprofits and their clients

· Has bipartisan legislative support

· Has 80% public support (UT survey)

3. WHAT YOU CAN DO

The first thing you can do is send an e-mail to Governor Phil Bredesen; to your own state senator and state representative; and to the members of the key committees (Environment, Conservation and Tourism in the Senate, and State and Local Government in the House). The bill has not been "put on notice" yet, but we expect hearings could begin by late March.

You'll want to keep your message brief, but consider pointing out that this bill addresses every legitimate concern that has been raised by legislators, the beverage companies, the retailers, the recyclers, the manufacturers, the counties, the state's solid waste professionals and the consumers.

Legislators love to hear from their own constituents, so if your legislator happens to be on one of these committees, that is great. However, since committees are the "gatekeepers" deciding which bills make it to a vote by the full legislature, committee members expect to hear from the rest of us. To see who they are, check the list at the bottom of this e-mail. To find your legislators, go to http://www.legislature.state.tn.us/. Under "Find my legislator," enter your street address and city.

4. NO NEW COST TO DISTRIBUTORS

Last year's bill required distributors to pay a container-recovery fee of 3¢ per container to fund program operations and compensate "redemption centers." (Redemption centers are what keep the empty containers out of the grocery stores.)

Last year's hearings, however, convinced us that legislators will not accept a 3¢ fee. So we've spent the intervening months conferring and researching and crunching numbers, and have now determined that we can run the deposit program with a fee of just 1/8¢ from the distributors. This happens to be almost precisely what they will NO LONGER BE PAYING in "litter taxes" on beer and soda.In effect, therefore, there will be no new cost to distributors at all.

(And keep in mind that though the litter taxes will be eliminated under this bill, Tennessee will still have its litter programs, including Keep Tennessee Beautiful and litter crews from the county jails, because the bill requires that these programs now be funded with unclaimed deposits.)

In order to reduce the cost to distributors, we had to retool the compensation to redemption centers. They will now be paid a maximum of 1.5¢ per container, which will come almost entirely out of the unclaimed deposits, as available, plus accrued interest. At the same time, redemption centers will now sell the aluminum, plastic and glass to processors. (In past bills, the processors got the scrap for free.) Scrap prices are down right now due to the economy, but in normal years, bottle-bill scrap collectively works out to an average of about 1.5¢ per container, depending on quantities and other factors.

5. INDUSTRY SUPPORT

As I mentioned in an earlier e-mail, container deposits now have the backing of some major industries and their trade groups, including the Aluminum Association, the Glass Packaging Institute and the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers. These three associations together represent more than 200 processors and manufacturers, from Alcoa to Mohawk to Owens-Illinois. Some of them are actively helping to lobby this bill in Nashville.

6. OTHER KINDS OF RECYCLING

Because redemption centers are now authorized to sell their scrap to processors, at least some of them may want to become collection sites for other recyclables as well, such as cardboard. This offers an immediate, cost-effective solution to the lack of recycling in Tennessee, especially in rural counties. It also defuses the beverage industry's latest argument that "what Tennessee really needs is comprehensive recycling via curbside collection."

Curbside recycling is a good thing, but it is not a magic bullet. Curbside programs can be expensive (in contrast to redemption centers, which cost local governments nothing). They aren't practical in rural areas (in contrast to redemption centers, which will be everywhere). Without some kind of incentive, such as "pay-as-you-throw" restrictions on weight or number of bags or certain items, curbside (especially in the South) tends to have low participation rates (in contrast to bottle bills, which have participation rates that average 80% nationwide).

And unlike a bottle bill, which produces an extremely "pure" scrap (i.e., properly sorted by material and color), curbside materials tend to be of considerably lower quality, because they cannot avoid being contaminated by other materials (e.g., broken glass baled with newspaper). This is especially true in the much-touted "single-stream" type of curbside, because once you've thrown everything into a single bin, it's impossible to completely "unscramble the egg" at the sorting plant. So while citizens may like single-stream for its convenience, communities find that the materials generate less revenue and are harder to sell. Indeed, some processors won't buy scrap from single-stream programs because of the potential damage to their processing equipment. In some cases, the community winds up paying to landfill the very materials it just paid to collect!

7. DON'T IGNORE LITTER

One other key limitation of curbside is that while it addresses municipal solid waste, it does nothing to address litter. Bottle bills do both. Because beverage containers account for roughly half of Tennessee's litter, and because each container will now be worth a nickel, we can expect to see container littering in particular drop by 80% to 90%, resulting in an overall litter reduction of around 40%. After a few more years, we could see an overall reduction of 60%. And if we are like Maine, Vermont, Iowa, Oregon and the other deposit states, we can ultimately look forward to the day when litter is no more than an occasional eyesore.

Compare this to what we have here in Tennessee under our current litter-control system, which is based on a stubborn insistence that education alone changes littering behavior. For almost three years now, Tennessee has been paying for an aggressive anti-litter campaign, known as "STOP IT," that features billboards, TV ads, radio spots, t-shirts, placards and so on.

How effective has this campaign been? Not so much, judging by the latest litter figures from the county litter grants program. Since the campaign was launched, Tennessee's litter has increased by 15%--from 22.3 million pounds in 2005-2006, to 25.9 million pounds in 2007-2008.

8. MORE SUPPORT FOR NONPROFITS

After seeing thriving nonprofit redemption centers in other states, we've decided to set an informal goal of having 25 percent of redemption centers in Tennessee owned by nonprofits such as Goodwill Industries or Habitat for Humanity. While the bill doesn't actually stipulate any goal, it does allow program funds to be used to help redemption centers get up and running. If we make the effort, I think Tennessee can become a national model for nonprofit redemption centers, thus providing social services while relieving the strain on public coffers.

9. COMMITTEE INFO

The bottle bill has been assigned to the Environment, Conservation and Tourism Committee in the Senate, and to the State Government Subcommittee of the State and Local Government Committee in the House. Here are the members:

Senate Environment, Conservation and Tourism Committee

LP= Legislative Plaza WMB= War Memorial Building Area Code (615)

Sen. Tim Barnes	D-22	Cheatham, Houston, Montgomery	305 WMB	741-2374
Sen. Charlotte Burks	D-15	Cumberland, Jackson, Overton, Pickett, Putnam, White	304 WMB	741-3978
Sen. Mike Faulk	R-4	Claiborne, Grainger, Hancock, Hawkins, Jefferson, Union	11A LP	741-2061
Sen. Doug Jackson	D-25	Dickson, Giles, Hickman, Humphreys, Lawrence, Lewis		741-4499
Sen. Jack Johnson	R-23	Williamson, part of Davidson	10A LP	741-2495
Sen. Steve Southerland	R-1	Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Unicoi	10 LP	741-3851
Sen. Eric Stewart	D-14	Franklin, Bledsoe, Coffee, Grundy, Sequatchie, Van Buren, Warren	310A WMB	741-6694
Sen. Jamie Woodson	R-6	Knox	6 LP	741-1648
Sen. Ken Yager	R-12	Campbell, Fentress, Morgan, Rhea, Roane, Scott	3 LP	741-1449

House State and Local Government Committee

Rep. Joe Carr	R-48	part of Rutherford	205 WMB	741-2180
Rep. Ty Cobb	D-64	part of Maury	23 LP	741-3005
Rep. Jim Coley	R-97	part of Shelby	207 WMB	741-8201
Rep. Joshua Evans	R-66	Robertson	207 WMB	741-2860
Rep. Ryan Haynes	R-14	part of Knox	203 WMB	741-2264
Rep. Ulysses Jones, Jr.	D-98	part of Shelby	35 LP	741-4575
Rep. John Litz	D-10	Hamblen	17 LP	741-6877
Rep. Gerald McCormick	R-26	part of Hamilton	117 WMB	741-2548
Rep. Larry Miller	D-88	part of Shelby	20 LP	741-4453
Rep. Gary Moore	D-50	part of Davidson	35 LP	741-4317
Rep. Mary Pruitt	D-58	part of Davidson	25 LP	741-3853
Rep. Bob Ramsey	R-20	part of Blount	207 WMB	741-3560
Rep. Eric Swafford	R-25	Cumberland & Bledsoe	202 WMB	741-2343
Rep. Harry Tindell	D-13	Knoxville	33 LP	741-2031
Rep. Curry Todd	R-95	Shelby	209 WMB	741-1866
Rep. Eric Watson	R-22	Meigs, Polk, part of Bradley	205 WMB	741-7799
Rep. Ben West Jr.	D-60	part of Davidson	108 WMB	741-6959
Rep. Eddie Yokley	D-11	Cocke and part of Greene	35 LP	741-6871

THANKS!!!

Marge Davis, Ph.D.

Coordinator, Pride of Place/Tennessee Bottle Bill Project

A Project of Scenic Tennessee, Inc.

45 Burris Court

Mt. Juliet, TN 37122

home (615) 758-8647

fax (615) 754-0966

cell (615) 294-2651

www.tnbottlebill.org

margedavis@comcast.net