pops - The Environment Report

Nationally, we go through more than 30 billion non-carbonated drinks every year (Photo by Lester Graham)

Most states don’t have bottle deposit laws to encourage people to return their empties. Only eleven states do. Now, some are expanding their recycling programs to include bottled water. Sadie Babits reports the states know requiring a deposit for the bottles will keep them from ending up in landfills:

Transcript

Every time Mary Nemmers buys a bottled beverage, she’s pays a five cent deposit at the register.

She wants to get that money back eventually. So she saves up her bottles and once a month brings them here to New Seasons Market in Portland, Oregon.

(sound of bottles being sorted)

Nemmers thinks this is a pretty convenient system. She gets to shop while a store employee sorts and hand counts her bottles.

Today Nemmers is getting nine dollars and change for her empties. While she’s glad to get that money back, she’s excited to learn that Oregon’s bottle deposit program has expanded.

“I just got some news that they’ll take back all the cans for deposits. Not just the ones that they sell. That started in January and that saves me an extra trip.”

That’s only part of the change. People in Oregon now also get five cents for every water and flavored water bottle they return to stores. That ends up being a lot of bottles.

Nationally, we go through more than 30 billion non-carbonated drinks every year. And that number is growing. Most of them end up in a landfill.

For Heather Schmidt, it makes sense to require a deposit for these bottles. She runs the sustainability program at New Seasons.

“We’re getting more back from our customers and that’s a good thing (chuckles). And we know that there’s quite a bit of water purchased, you know, and we’re selling it we want to take it back.”

Out of the eleven states that have bottle deposit programs, Oregon is one of the first to include bottles for water and other non-carbonated drinks.

Maine includes just about every beverage bottle. Connecticut adds bottled water to its program in April. New York and Massachusetts are debating similar expansions.

Mary Nemmers says it was about time that her state recognize that something needed to be done to make sure water bottles stay out of landfills.

“Because I do a lot of walking and I’ve seen lots and lots of water bottles thrown around and in trash cans. I assume that the expansion will reduce that and I’d like to see Oregon stay on the cutting edge of recycling.”

Not everyone is thrilled.

I spoke with the president of the Northwest Grocery Alliance who told me stores want recycling off their property.

A spokesman for the major food outlet Winco said the same thing. Stores say it’s messy to deal with “garbage” and stores have to dedicate staff time to recycling.

Heather Schmidt says at New Seasons Market, they don’t mind.

“Operationally, because we’ve increased the volume, it does mean we’ve had to add some staff labor to that to process but it’s something that we’re committed to.”

While most of the bottles are hand counted at New Seasons Market stores, large chain grocery stores use reverse vending machines.

I can stick a redeemable bottle into the machine. The machine checks to make sure it’s the right kind of bottle. Once it’s accepted, the bottle gets crushed and I get my five cents. Those crushed bottles, along with the plastic ones, end up here.

(sound of recycling plant)

We’re inside a glass and plastic bottle recycling plant. It’s a labyrinth of conveyer belts and equipment. The last drops of stale beer and old soda pop in the bottles make it smell sort of like your gym shoes meet the town dump.

Sadie: “Can we check out where the plastic bottles go?”

John: “Yes, We’ll go back this way.”

That’s John Anderson. He’s the President of the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative.

“Now, the plastic, we have seen an increase, but we’re only two months into this expansion at this point and it’s a slower time of year for water and flavored water.”

We stop in front of three bales of recycled plastic that remind me of massive hay bales.

I can pick out the water bottles scrunched together with a lot of soda bottles. These plastic bales will be sold to manufacturers – mostly overseas – who will turn this plastic back into something useable.

Anderson says all of the glass though, stays local and gets turned back into beer bottles.

Bottle deposits work.

The states that have bottle deposit laws have dramatically high bottle recycling rates – as high as Michigan’s 97%.

But the U.S. average is below 40%. The rest of those bottles spend forever in a landfill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Transcript

(sound of forklift backing up, pumpkin seeds pouring out of roaster)

It’s pumpkin seed roasting day at Eden Foods. It’s a natural foods company based in Michigan. It sells things like rice, canned beans, and all kinds of packaged fruits and sauces.

Michael Potter is the company’s president. More than a decade ago, he came across some news reports out of Europe.

“And I learned all the can linings in the USA were lined with this lining that leaches BPA into foods from the can.”

That got him thinking, and researching. Then he started badgering his can manufacturers.

“We virtually begged them to provide us an alternative. We persisted in hounding them and eventually the Ball Corporation said they’d make a can with an old lining they used to make.”

The lining’s made from a plant resin instead of the epoxy resin with BPA. The thing was, it would cost Eden Foods 14 percent more – that’s about 2 cents a can.

But Michael Potter says he had to make the switch.

“We’re selling this not only to people that we don’t know, in the market, we’re feeding it to our children, our grandchildren and ourselves – we didn’t want to eat bisphenol A.”

But there was one problem. He couldn’t make the switch for canned tomatoes.

Tomatoes are acidic, and they can eat through the plant resin can lining. That could lead to bacteria or rust getting into the food.

“There is no alternative for high acid foods other than bisphenol-A lining at this point. We are urging, nudging, demanding a bisphenol-A free alternative. And we’re optimistic we’ll end up with one.”

But the metal can industry says those alternatives just don’t exist right now.

John Rost is with the North American Metal Packaging Alliance. He says the industry is trying to find new materials. But he says shoppers shouldn’t worry about eating canned food.

“The levels of BPA that are coming from epoxy can linings are exceedingly low. We’re talking low parts per billion. That level has been deemed safe by the European Food Safety Authority, Health Canada and the US FDA.”

That’s true, but Health Canada has declared BPA toxic. It’s making moves to limit its use.

A number of independent scientists debate that there’s any safe level of BPA.

Maricel Maffini studies BPA at Tufts University School of Medicine. She says they’ve seen harmful effects on lab animals at the same very low levels of BPA that are leaching into our food from cans.

She says that’s because BPA acts like the hormone estrogen.

“You just need a tiny little signal to trigger an effect. So I think it’s unfair to say there is a safe dose because as scientists we cannot say that yet. We have not found a dose that is low enough where we don’t see effects.”

She says babies and kids are the most at risk. She says BPA has caused lasting damage in lab animals when the animals were exposed to the chemical both before and after birth.

“I think we should be concerned, I think we should limit our consumption of canned foods especially if you are pregnant or if you have babies.”

It’s possible that US can makers will be forced to stop using BPA. Leaders in Congress have introduced bills that could soon ban BPA in all food and beverage containers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Tag: pops

Money Back for Water Bottles

Transcript

Related Links

Kicking a Chemical Out of Cans

Transcript

Related Links