Bottle Bill Boost Plugged

Stupid idea. Any bottles I have already get recyclied at home. All it does is raise the price. And the state keeps the tax.

The SARAH organization used to run a bottle deposit return store on Foxon Boulevard, which was very nice, with a sink so people who got their bottles and cans off the street could rinse them out. It provided jobs to the facility workers and a place for people to return bottles and cans outside of grocery stores with their limited machines space for returns.

https://www.wfsb.com/news/east-haven-redemption-center-to-close-next-month/article_c29f4b13-51b6-59d5-ada2-40816f02e699.amp.html

Many similar redemption centers closed due to the State of CT not giving them enough reimbursement for providing this service. The state should raise the deposit and give a decent amount to redemption centers for all kinds of plastic, metal and glass bottles and cans. Soda, juice, ice tea, water, etc. If it's a standard size drinking container it should have a deposit and a redemption to reduce disposable container consumption and increase redemption and recycling.
And I don't know about anyone else, but I'm tired of going to the redemption centers at grocery stores and having the machines constantly out of order or full and having to wait for a store employee to come fix them, and the long waits while people with multiple bags or carts wait for the couple of machines that are available. I would much rather go to a redemption center that provides jobs for people who really need them (like SARAH for people with disabilities,) with multiple machines and on site employees to help you right away when there is an issue and sinks to wash out the containers so you don't smell the stale beer when people don't have access to water to wash the containers,

The deposit-and-return system, ideally, should apply to as many glass and plastic food containers as possible---not just beverages but also jars and tubs and squeeze bottles and you-name-it, if they are compatible with the kind of plastic that soda bottles are made of. Peanut butter jars. Ketchup bottles. Yogurt cups. Cooking oil bottles. Pasta sauce bottles. Plus (definitely!!) nips, even though they are less than half a pint. And what about dish detergent bottles? Shampoo bottles? Cough syrup bottles?

Any plastic that's compatible with the kind now accepted by the crusher machines ought to be included. And as for glass---glass is glass; there's no reason on earth to exempt ANY glass container from the system.

Imagine if city bulk recycling then consisted mostly of cardboard and paper and the kind of "tin" cans that beans come in, with no glass to speak of and far less plastic than it now does.

Maybe there should also be some kind of monetary incentive for people to bring their excess plastic bags to the recycling bins that are in the entrance area to grocery stores. Too often now people put them in the trash only to have them fly off in the wind when the public works trucks come and dump the toter into the truck.

This should pilot this in high litter areas and see if it works first (narrator: of course it didn't work because it was a stupid idea)

Updating the bottle bill is long overdue!! It hasn't been updated since 1983. This will greatly diminish the trash on the streets and parks. Municipalities won't have to pay so much to get rid of their trash! All around, it's a great idea!

Having been in the business, I doubt that this increase along with the handling fee will pass. Nice mention of the SRC. Distributors lobbyists fight and win every year. If had had another 2 cents per container, many of the shuttered redemption centers would still be open. A break even business. Expansion to juices and teas not a chance.

These Bottle deposit machines are the poor peoples ATM MACHINES.

I disagree that the bottle deposit fees should be expanded. It is my opinion that the deposits are a thinly veiled tax that the State of Connecticut is glad to collect. A year after the bottle bill was expanded to include water bottles, the state issued a report claiming the program a success because they were able to collect millions of dollars on the bottles that were never returned. So the barometer of success is determined by the LACK of recycling....less bottles returned equals more money for the state. The legislature would love to put a deposit on every can and bottle because it is a profit center, it has nothing to do with the environment or recycling.
In addition, the mechanism to return your empty cans and bottles now is completely inadequate as mentioned by other commenters. The machines are too few, often broken, all ways filthy and crammed into some spare space carved out by a store that is obligated to return your deposits. How are these stores ever going to handle the volume of returnables once it includes everything on the grocery store shelf? The answer is they cant and they wont...because the barometer of success is determined by how many dimes the state collects, not by the amount of deposits returned to the consumers. Finally, with the level of technology we have at our disposal, why cant any bottle or can be returned to any machine for your refund? The answer is the more difficult the return process is, the greater the chance you will get too frustrated and not recycle at all. And where does that money end up? In the states' pocket.