In response to the editorial on the bottle bill, you missed a key point. The initial reasoning behind its creation was to encourage recycling when recycling wasn’t prevalent. In the 23-year history of Iowa bottle deposit, things have changed. Many of Iowa’s major cities now have curbside recycling, making it easy and convenient for cans to be disposed of properly.

Iowans sometimes forget that they are depositing a nickel on every can they buy. The nickel received is not a gift for recycling. No one but the state makes money on this deal.

The state, not the store, receives uncollected deposit. As far as making deposit an incentive to recycle, look around the parking lot after a football game.

You don’t see people scrambling to gather cans because of the deposit. From the view of the grocer, cans are definitely a health hazard – if not for the food, they certainly are for the employees that have to handle the cans, which are essentially trash.

Having worked in a deposit redemption area, the bottles that people bring back are more than often dirty, sticky and not empty. If Iowa should decide to keep the bill, the bill should at least be changed to make the redemption of deposit more sanitary for everyone.

Lee Koehler

Freshman

Mechanical engineering