California er faktisk vedens 6.største økonomi! Delstatens politikere har skjønt alvoret. Verdens vellykkede pantesystemer er besiktiget og Tomra-dominerte Tyskland nevnes spesifikt som forbilde. I går passerte lovforslag SB 372 første hinder, "the Senate Environmental Quality Committee" og ble videresendt til "the Senate Appropriations Committee". Både Coca-Cola Company og Pepsi Co støtter lovforslaget.



Senate Committee to Vote on Statewide Rehaul of Recycling System

Beverage makers and retailers would carry more of the recycling burden under the bill.

By Evan Symon, January 15, 2020 4:43 pm


A returning bill to the California Senate that would require beverage makers to take back their own cans and bottles, rather than the current system of consumers physically bringing empty containers to recycling centers, is to be voted on in a Senate Committee this week.

A new type of can and bottle buyback

SB 372, authored by Senator Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont), would give beverage companies until 2024 to come up with a buyback system. The bill will also add wine and liquor bottles to the revamped recycling and deposit program. A beverage stewardship program would then oversee the new ‘Beverage Container Recycling Program’ to ensure payments, correct usage, and use uncollected refund money to fund the program.

Under SB 372, California would have a system similar to Oregon or Michigan. Both states have ‘reverse vending machines’ outside of food stores and other locations where machines accept “depositable” bottles and cans in exchange for money or store credit.

In recent years the state’s recycling system has been the subject of growing scrutiny due to a growing segment of consumers in California not recycling, California losing half of it’s recycling centers in the last ten years, and a sizable loss of junkers and can collectors resulting from a surging economy after the Great Recession.

Support for SB 372

Many lawmakers, environmental organizations, and cities in California support SB 372 as they believe it would solve these problems, fix a broken system, and have beverage companies be in charge of an issue they helped create.

Senator Wieckowski, the bill’s author who has been a long-time supporter of recycling and fixing the industry, has been trying to pass a similar type of bill for years. In 2018 he authored SB 168, a proto-version of the current bill, which subsequently failed in an Assembly vote.

“Our bottle recycling system is broken,” said Senator Wieckowski earlier this week. “It’s time for the beverage industry to step up and take more responsibility.

The current system is broken down, its antiquated, it’s done. We’re going to turn it over to private business.”

A ‘bill to appeal to everyone’

Recycling experts have noted how the bill is designed to make it easily passable.

“Wieckowski couldn’t have written a better bill to appeal to everyone,” said Sarah Cornish, an environmental policy expert in Sacramento. “They went through a lot of programs that have been instituted all over the world and found the type Californians would go for. The bill says the companies have to decide on what, but it’s obvious that they want them to use the machines Oregon and Germany use. With Lotto machines and Coinstars and water stations, this would just be another in the supermarket landscape. That’s the picture he’s painting.”

“It also helps that other states who did this see higher recycling rates. That helps sell it, since California’s are going down right now, at least when it comes to depositable bottles and cans and things.”

“Also, it gives an environmentally friendly solution and has drink companies be responsible, which appeals to Democrats. And it also takes away a lot of government responsibility into the hands of, as the Senator said, private business. That gives Republicans something.”

Companies such as Pepsico and Coca-Cola have also given support of the bill, as they have with measures in similar initiatives around the world.

https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/senate-committee-to-vote-on-statewide-rehaul-of-recycling-system/




Updated: California Lawmakers Consider Bottle Bill Overhaul

A Senate committee is expected to hold hearings on a bill that would make beverage manufacturers more responsible for helping consumers recycle.

Waste360 Staff | Jan 15, 2020

,
This year, some California legislators are looking to overhaul the state’s Bottle Bill.

A state Senate committee is expected to hold hearings this week on a bill that would make beverage manufacturers more responsible for helping consumers recycle, the Los Angeles Times reports. Legislators also will discuss extending bill provisions to wine and liquor makers.

The push to revamp the state Bottle Bill comes amid growing attention around plastic pollution and the beverage industry’s goals to increase the use of recycled plastic in their bottles. In addition, last August, California’s largest operator of recycling redemption centers, RePlanet, closed all 284 of its centers.

Nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog wrote a letter supporting the bill. In the letter, the group says: "This approach of extended producer responsibility for the end-of-life of empty beverage containers has proven to be the best model for generating the highest redemption rates in the most successful bottle deposits systems in the country and around the world."

"As the process moves forward, we urge you to amend the legislation to include other aspects of the programs that have worked across the nation and world. These include consumer convenience based on mandated return to all major retailers so that consumers can redeem bottles and cans where they buy them, as well as preventing curbside haulers from collecting consumer deposits," the letter adds. "In addition, we urge you to protect high-volume recycling processors who remain today and make sure the beverage industry gives them preference for their fealty to the current system as it develops a new one, similar to minority business contracting preferences in state government. We applaud the inclusion of wine bottles as California’s hallmark beverage and toast of the state should not be excluded from the redemption program."

On January 15, the bill passed out of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee by a 4 to 1 vote. The measure now heads to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

"We feel that the central concept of this bill is right, that beverage companies have to take responsibility for the products the producers make," said Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court, who testified before the environmental committee, in a statement. "If you use a wrapper for a product, you are responsible for making sure it is recycled. If we go with the concept that makes the people profiting from the sale of the products in those beverages responsible, we can get a redemption rate that is 98 percent like in Germany, or 89 percent in Michigan…. This is really about getting people their money back, but a lot of these details have to be worked out as we go forward."

Los Angeles Times has more:

Across California, can and bottle redemption centers have closed. Consumers struggle to find places to get nickels and dimes for their containers. Supermarkets are obliged to redeem cans and bottles not deposited elsewhere. Trash companies take the remainder.

Standing apart in California’s recycling crisis are drink manufacturers. They have never been required to find a permanent repository or reuse for the billions of bottles and cans they produce. California’s 3-decade-old “Bottle Bill” — the law that seeks to boost recycling by putting a 5- or 10-cent bounty on most cans and bottles — has left that work to everyone else.

Read the full article here:

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-01-13/california-recycling-beverage-industry-cans-and-bottles

Correction: Jan 16, 2020

This article has been updated to reflect the Senate Environmental Quality Committee's vote to move the measure to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

https://www.waste360.com/legislation-regulation/updated-california-lawmakers-consider-bottle-bill-overhaul




Consumer Watchdog Warns Of Bottle Deposit System Collapse Without Major Reform

PR Newswire PR NewswireJanuary 14, 2020

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/consumer-watchdog-warns-bottle-deposit-system-collapse-without-194900024.html