We are all familiar with the bottle deposit on some of the drinks we purchase in the State of Iowa, aka the bottle bill. Iowa is one of ten states that have a bottle bill. When coming to Ames, I accepted that there would be a deposit on all of my drinks. This was not new to me, since I spent a few years in Europe (courtesy of the US Army), and there were bottle deposits on every drink container of a quarter Euro. There are two major differences between the Iowa deposit system and the one I used in Germany. First are the return options, and second are the types of beverages that have the deposit.
The first difference between the two deposit systems is on the return side. In Germany, I could return an empty drink container to any retailer for a refund of the deposit and/or apply it to the deposit of the next purchase. This system worked, and I hardly ever saw trash of any type, especially drink containers.
According to Herbert Peacock in the Des Moines Register, the Iowa beverage deposit is “a tax and inconvenience on the citizens of the state” instead of a deposit. In this story, Peacock outlines some of his attempts to redeem his bottle deposits in multiple trips to multiple retailers, costing him time and money. He outlines the time and vehicle usage he was not compensated for while attempting to collect his deposits, the broken return machines, and the return area being unpleasant. Peacock described the unpleasant redemption areas, which “smelled like stale beer and pop” and that his “shoes stuck to the ground after I left the area”.
Another article in the Des Moines Register quoted state Rep. Brian Lohse commenting about the recent exemption for retailers who serve food.
“They shouldn’t have those dirty cans and bottles coming into places where they’re preparing food,” Lohse said. This notion of dirty containers could also be applied to personal residences where citizens collect the containers for trips to the redemption centers, in the 70 counties still with redemption centers, according to Cleaner Iowa. The inconvenience of both time and money could explain why most of the beverage containers I see lying around parking lots, by fences, or in ditches happen to have had a deposit paid.
The second difference is the discrimination of beverage contents to determine which containers have a deposit. This was the most surprising part of the Iowa bottle bill to me. The contents determine if a deposit was charged or not. I noticed this when I purchased a plastic bottle containing tea. There was no deposit. If I purchased the same bottle but with a carbonated or alcoholic beverage inside, a deposit was charged. This is a type of discrimination instead of a recycling effort, as the law claims. If the only intentions of the law were recycling and less litter, then the container would determine if a deposit was charged and not the contents.
Some organizations and legislatures have begun to question the existence of the bottle bill. In the Des Moines Register article, this quote questions the continued existence of this law:
“This extremely low retailer participation rate makes it significantly more difficult for consumers to redeem their cans and could lead to recycling issues,” said RG Schwarm, Cleaner Iowa’s executive director. “If redemption is no longer convenient for consumers, redemption rates will fall.”
I have over 100 bottles in my apartment right now since CyRide does not go to the only redemption location in Story County, so this is a tax for me. What do you think about the bottle bill? Is it a discriminatory tax or a recycling effort?
