The Bottle Bill passes the Vermont House!
H. 175
In 1972, Vermont passed its first bottle bill as a way to clean up litter along our roads. Since then, it’s become a successful statewide recycling program that allows Vermonters to redeem beer bottles and soda cans for a nickel per container.
Granted preliminary approval today by the VT House (vote 99-46), H.175 updates this landmark environmental bill by expanding the redeemable list to include plastic water bottles, wine and hard cider bottles, and containers for all carbonated and non-carbonated beverages (except for dairy products).
Plastic water bottles are the second-most littered piece of trash in Vermont, and nationally, 75 percent wind up in landfills.
Right now, the bottle bill covers only 46 percent of the beverage containers sold in our state.
By passing H.175, we’ll increase the number of recycled containers in Vermont by an estimated 375 million per year.
Plus, containers redeemed under the bottle bill are more valuable for recycling. They’re cleaner than the cans and bottles that get mixed into our single-stream curbside recycling bins, so they’re far more likely to be remade into new containers.
According to a recent poll, 88 percent of Vermonters support the bottle bill and 83 percent support updating it to include more containers. Here’s why expanding the bottle bill makes sense:
- Increases recycling rates and reduces litter.
- Supports closed-loop economy by making more bottles back into bottles.
- Reduces costs to solid waste management districts by reducing the volume of glass in our recycling bins.
- Increases the handling fee for redemption centers, to cover the added work associated with sorting these products.
- Boosts the economy: Bottle bill redemption programs create more jobs than curbside recycling.
- Generates more revenue for clean water: As of 2019, the value of all unclaimed deposits flow into the Clean Water Fund.
“You may be asking yourself, why is this so important? What’s the big deal if I put my empty bottles in my blue bin rather than returning them for redemption?
Well, consider this: 72 percent of all glass collected under the Bottle Bill is recycled into new glass containers while virtually none of the glass collected in your blue bin is. It’s too contaminated. In fact, just weeks ago, the Chittenden Solid Waste District paid $400,000 to settle a legal case stemming from the years it spent secretly dumping 18,000 tons of glass that was likely too dirty for recycling. ”