On Friday, February 5, the state Senate Committee on Economic Development, Environment, and Technology deferred a bill that would have repealed the state\u2019s beverage container recycling programs. Introduced by committee vice chair Sen. Sam Slom and Sen. Lorraine Inouye, Senate Bill 2714 seems to have been\u00a0prompted largely by findings of\u00a0the Office of the Auditor that the Deposit Beverage Container (DBC, the result of the 2002 “bottle bill”) program\u00a0is \u201cpoorly managed and susceptible to fraud.\u201d The bill argued that the counties, and not the strapped state Department of Health (DOH), should administer recycling programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cRedemption centers have refused to provide documentation for the amount of materials redeemed and related reimbursements requested. Auditors also discovered redemption centers operating without proper state certification. Local media reports reveal that tons of glass containers are not recycled due to the lack of reimbursement funding to offset processing costs,\u201d the bill stated.<\/p>\n
Even so, testimony on the bill unanimously favored retaining the DBC program, as well as the DOH’s glass Advance Disposal Fee (ADF) program.<\/p>\n
The DOH, for one, pointed out that the DBC and ADF programs, which provide reimbursements of up to 5 center per recycled container, have diverted more than seven billion containers from the state\u2019s landfills since 2005 (when the DBC program went into effect).<\/p>\n
The Hawai`i County Department of Environmental Management added that despite their shortcomings, which can be corrected, the programs have been the state\u2019s most successful and eliminating them would \u201cresult in needless landfilling and incineration of valuable resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
Terry Telfer, president of Reynolds Recycling, pointed out that \u201cthe ten bottle-bill states nationwide recycle more than all the non-deposit states combined. Bottle bills, just like Hawai`i\u2019s HI-5 law, is the only proven method that addresses landfill diversion and litter control at the same time. If you were to see a beverage container on the street or elsewhere, it would be gone the next time you passed by.\u201d<\/p>\n
Telfer also noted that the reason tons of glass are not being recycled is because of a lack of funding for ADF containers (wine, etc.), not HI-5 glass containers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHawai`i\u2019s HI-5 program has made the recycling industry the state\u2019s largest exporter. Recycling saves energy. For every aluminum can recycled you save an energy equivalent of a cup of gasoline,\u201d Telfer stated.<\/p>\n
Others suggested several improvements to the programs, from increasing the ADF to meet the real costs of handling glass containers, to including wine and liquor containers in the DBC program, to merging the two programs. A number of bills introduced this session attempt to tackle the issue of providing adequate funding for glass container recycling.<\/p>\n
SB 2003 would amend the definition of “deposit beverage” to include wine; SB 2991 would similarly add wine and spirits to the DBC program and require the DOH to establish an advisory committee on glass recycling to provide recommendations on how to best integrate the ADF program and DBC container program glass streams.<\/p>\n
No hearing has been scheduled on either bill.<\/p>\n
Rather than adding wine and spirits to the DBC program, House Bill 2251 proposed increasing the ADF for glass containers to $0.03 for containers less than two liters and $0.045 cents for containers larger than that. The current fee is $0.015 per container regardless of size.<\/p>\n
Food and beverage industry-related companies opposed the measure. And while the DOH testified that it appreciated the attempt to provide the ADF program with more funding, it could not support the fee increase without more data.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaking any change without analysis could potentially destabilize or bankrupt the program. The program does not collect the data necessary to adequately analyze the proposal,\u201d the DOH stated in its written testimony to the House Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection.<\/p>\n
The department added\u00a0that a study quantifying all aspects of the program \u2014 the number of containers currently covered, number of containers in the proposed new category, average size\/weight of both universes of containers, distribution of container sizes within each population, and shipping\/processing costs to recycle the glass \u2014 would need to be done first.<\/p>\n
Following the DOH\u2019s suggestion, the committee on February 4 gutted the measure and replaced its contents with language directing the DOH to 1)\u00a0assess the viability of the glass ADF program and report findings and recommendations to the Legislature; and (2)\u00a0report to the Legislature on the department\u2019s progress in adopting recommendations contained in the 2014 auditor’s report, \u201cA Study to Identify Local Alternatives to Shipping Non-Deposit Glass Out of the State of Hawai`i.\u201d<\/p>\n
SB353, carried over from the 2015 session, would have also amended the ADF for glass containers to a tiered structure and would have required the auditor to audit the program. No hearing on the bill has been scheduled.<\/p>\n
\u2014Teresa Dawson<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Friday, February 5, the state Senate Committee on Economic Development, Environment, and Technology deferred a bill that would have repealed the state’s beverage container recycling programs. Introduced by committee vice chair Sen. Sam Slom and Sen. Lorraine Inouye, Senate … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[351],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-8736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eh-xtra","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}