Originally Posted by
FBinNY
I have no illusions that 5 cents is enough motivation for people not to litter, but here's where the unexpected benefit kicks in. All over the NY metro area there are self-employed independent recyclers, aka street people. They wander all over collecting bottles and cans and bring them back for the deposit. People hate them when bring in trash bags full of bottles, many of which they've pulled from street trash bins. But they also pick countless containers off the street every day.
Since the deposit bills ware written back when glass bottles were refilled, they exempted liquor bottles because of various liquor laws and because of the logistics, wherein those weren't delivered in high volume by trucks that could take back empties. These days, bottle deposits are handled by vending machines which crush the bottles and dispense a receipt. The only issue is accounting which is handled by bar codes on the bottles.
Very good points. I recall when I was a kid in the sixties, soft drinks were all in glass bottles, delivered to stores in reusable wooden crates, which were used to send the empties back tot he bottler for refill. The small 10-12 oz bottles were $0.02-0.03 each. The quarts were $0.05. I, and several other kids were given "allowance" in the form of empty bottles. Now, fifty years later, the price is the same-
not corrected for inflation. Your point about economic incentive to recycle is well met.
The original point remains that people drink and drive. Some even drink
while driving. The section of road I spoke about in first post was pretty isolated, and not easily accessible by foot for the typical "recycling engineer". Also the age of the refuse seemed to have a pretty large range. Another factor is that very few soft drinks are sold in glass bottles anymore. I did see a bit of plastic, but still a disproportionately large amount of glass. Some one tossing back a beer on the way to the beach is more likely to want to dispose of the evidence than someone drinking a Pepsi who is more likely to save it for the recycle bin.