June 2019 - Parks & Recreation - 14

LETTERS TO EDITOR
We hope the articles you read in Parks & Recreation are thought-provoking and engaging, and
nd we
welcome your opinions about what you read in these pages. Through social media posts, website
te comments, emails to staff or posts on NRPA Connect, let us know how the magazine's articles apply to
ve editor,
your job and your agency. To submit feedback for this section, email Sonia Myrick, executive
at smyrick@nrpa.org.

Comment from Marge Davis, coordinator, TennCan: The TN
Bottle Bill Project regarding Richard J.
Dolesh's April 2019 article, " Recycling Is Dead: Now What? " :
Dear Richard,
I just learned (thanks to a Facebook
link from Warner Parks Nature
Center in Nashville) about your
article, " Recycling Is Dead: Now
What? " in the April 2019 Parks and
Recreation magazine.

Thank you for bringing this
well-researched and important
story to the NRPA audience.
Thank you for bringing this
well-researched and important story to the NRPA audience. It's such
a vital topic that I hate to fuss, especially to someone I've never met.
But given the nature, size and importance of your audience, I wanted to point out two details that I
hope merit clarification in a future
issue: One is the absence of any
mention of " bottle bills " (deposit-return for glass, plastic and aluminum beverage containers). The
other is the misleading statement
that glass is unrecyclable.
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Parks & Recreation

1. Any story of the crisis in public
recycling should include at least
some mention of crisis-resistant
bottle bills, in which consumers
pay a small deposit (usually 5
or 10 cents) when they buy the
beverage and get back the deposit when they return the empty container for recycling. Bottle
bills side-step the contamination
and market issues that plague
municipal recycling, for three
reasons: First, the material is
kept extremely " clean " because
cans and bottles are individually sorted, either electronically
or manually, at the redemption
point. Second, bottle-bill material is collected in extremely
high quantities, because the deposit incentivizes redemption
rates averaging 65-90 percent,
compared to just 10-30 percent
in non-deposit states. Finally,
because of these two other factors, manufacturers are hungry
for bottle-bill material and are
willing to pay a premium for it.
Some other points about bottle bills (and please forgive if you
know any of this already):
* Deposit laws have existed for decades in 10 U.S. states (and exist
or are pending in 40-plus other
jurisdictions globally, including

| J U N E 2 0 1 9 | W W W. PA R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N . O R G

most of Canada,
da, most of Australia, much of Europe,
ope Israel,
Turkey, part of India, the United
Kingdom, and numerous island
nations or territories including
Guam, Fiji and Jamaica).
Even though the 10 deposit states
represent only 27 percent of the
U.S. population, they account for
nearly half of all beverage containers recycled.
Bottle bills are not obsolete. Only
one state law has been repealed,
while nearly all of the others
have been expanded to add
more beverages to the program
(such as bottled water). Globally,
something like 10 new deposit
programs have been announced
in just the last three years.
Very few returns today happen inside grocery stores. Most modern
bottle bills use a combination of
electronic RVMs (reverse vending
machines), hub-and-spoke dropoff systems and independent redemption centers. Many redemption programs are funded at least
in part by unclaimed deposits
and scrap revenue.
Public support for bottle bills averages 80 percent (two professional
polls on a proposed deposit here
in Tennessee came in at 80.4 and
83.2 percent, respectively).

June 2019 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of June 2019 - Parks & Recreation