Recycler says bottle bill not timely

By Mannix Porterfield

Blame it on the recession.

When demand for certain products falls, with that goes the need to produce more items that could be recycled, making a proposed “bottle bill” unwise, Greg Sayre says.

“Right now, we’re going through a difficult period, not just recycling, but economically,” the head of the Independent Professional Recyclers Association in Charleston says.

Recycling markets are driven by the production of automobiles, an industry hungry for steel, plastic and glass.

Construction is another area that hinges to some degree on recyclables, Sayre said.

“When new homes are being built, that soda bottle you drink in the office will be turned into a rug,” he said.

“That’s what most carpet any more is made of — old plastic bottles. Think of it. If people aren’t buying new houses, then they’re not buying new carpets. If they’re not fixing up their old house, they’re not buying carpets. If they’re not buying cars, then there’s the carpet in the cars.”

Sayre views another side to the economy that ties in with recyclables — the retail trade industry.

“If retail trade business is good, there’s a lot of demand for cardboard,” he said. “When the retail trade business is bad, no one needs a box for anything.”

For the seventh time in as many years, the West Virginia Citizen Action Group is planning to offer a bill that would impose a totally refundable, 10-cent deposit on beverage containers — plastic, glass and aluminum — as a means of discouraging consumers from tossing them out the window of vehicles and littering highways.

WVCAG officials point to the success of similar laws in other states in ridding highways of discarded containers.

Linda Frame, the group’s program director, says studies show 80 percent of beverage containers vanish from highways in states with bottle laws while overall litter is diminished between 40 and 60 percent.

“It’s not that there aren’t markets for some of the items that you do get with a bottle bill,” Sayre acknowledged.

“But what happens in a downturned market is that many of the bottles that you would collect, you would not be able to sell at all.”

Even with containers in demand when a market is healthy, there is a struggle to peddle them, he said.

“In a bad market, there’s no home,” he said. “Recycling markets for many materials have collapsed. What we really need to do now is just concentrate on recycling the products that we can recycle, that we can find a home for.”

Sayre feels it makes no sense to impose a 10-cent deposit, at least on plastic containers, while the economy is in turmoil.

“Now, you still have good markets for metal items, and you can still sell aluminum cans for a good price,” he said.

“If there were a glass industry in West Virginia, we would be a leader in glass recycling.”

Even if the economy were sound, Sayre said, he would still be in opposition to the WVCAG proposal.

“I think it’s an undue burden on the consumer,” he said. “You’re wanting to recycle items that in good market times there is no problem with recycling and in bad market times you can’t recycle anyway. The bottle bill, I think, doesn’t make any sense at all right now. What makes sense is to go back to your curbside program and scrap dealers and basically try to recycle as much out of the waste stream as you can that people are handling. Don’t worry about the stuff that no one can find a home for.”

So-called “bottle bills” have been offered six times in the Legislature, all to no avail.

“Right now, because of the economic downturn, I think it’s just a bad move,” Sayre said.

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com

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