Massachusetts is battling over an expanded bottle deposit law (Question 2 on the November ballot) while ignoring the much bigger recycling crisis looming on the horizon.
The state is quickly running out of landfill space and facing growing resistance to the hundreds of thousands of tons of Bay State trash being shipped to other states. But rather than come up with a comprehensive plan to reduce trash waste overall, the state’s environmental and business communities are fixated on a ballot question that would extend the nickel deposit to noncarbonated water, tea, and juice containers. The question would exempt wine bottles and milk containers and also inflation-adjust the nickel deposit.
The existing Massachusetts bottle deposit law works and the proposed expansion would undoubtedly improve recycling of containers. But drink containers are only a small part of our waste problem, probably 2 to 3 percent of the total. Massachusetts generates nearly 8 million tons of trash each year, and two-thirds of the waste gets burned or buried. More than half of the trash going to landfills or incinerators could be recycled.
The debate over the bottle deposit law has featured competing ads arguing over sideshow issues while missing the larger point that the state is doing a poor job of reducing its solid waste stream overall. State officials keep churning out solid waste master plans that set targets for disposal and recycling, but Massachusetts keeps falling short. Legislation that would require municipalities to gradually reduce the amount of trash generated per capita, from 600 pounds in 2015 to 450 pounds in 2020, doesn’t get passed. At some point, we’re going to run out of space for all the junk we keep throwing away.
Like Massachusetts, Vermont has been grappling with whether to expand its bottle deposit law to include other containers. But the Green Mountain State decided to launch a comprehensive universal recycling plan first and then decide what to do with its bottle deposit law.
“The bottle bill is an expensive method of recycling,” said Deb Markowitz, the secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources. She said Vermont wants to see the impact of its universal recycling plan before tinkering with the bottle deposit law. “It may make the whole bottle bill unnecessary,” she said.
Vermont’s plan would start banning recyclable materials from landfills starting in July next year and require municipalities to charge residents for the amount of trash they throw out. The plan would be implemented in phases, with bottles and cans, aluminum foil, newspapers, and other types of paper banned starting July 1, 2015. Leaf and yard debris would be banned the following year, and food waste the year after that. The onus would be on waste haulers to make sure anything that can be recycled is removed before being dumped. The cost of recycling would be rolled into the cost of trash removal. The Vermont plan may end up making trash removal more costly, but it attempts to address the state’s waste problem comprehensively.
Massachusetts has already implemented bans on various types of waste (food waste is the most recent), but many of them are not aggressively enforced. There’s also no rhyme or reason to waste reduction at the municipal level. Some communities take the issue seriously and come up with initiatives to reduce the amount of trash being thrown out. Others do little or nothing.
Worcester residents, who pay fees for each bag of trash they put at the curb, generate 328 pounds of trash per capita annually, according to the most recent data. By contrast, residents of Boston and Springfield, who face almost no restrictions on what they can put in their trash, generate 674 and 766 pounds of trash per capita, respectively.
Stephen Lisauskas, vice president of government affairs at WasteZero, a North Andover company that helps cities and towns reduce waste and increase recycling, gave a presentation to CommonWealth on Wednesday that highlighted how the state is failing to address its waste problem.
His most devastating chart showed that the state spends nearly $27 million a year burning or burying materials that could be recycled and sold for $67 million. He noted the chart understated the problem because it focused only on a handful of materials that could be recycled.
Lisauskas said the legislation that would impose trash reduction performance standards on communities would not be onerous. He said 40 percent of the state’s cities and towns already meet the 600-pounds-per-capita threshold. Getting everyone on board, he said, could save municipalities $42 million a year, create thousands of jobs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Bob Moylan, the former commissioner of the Worcester Department of Public Works and Parks, the man who implemented a pay-as-you-throw system in New England’s second-largest city, opposes expanding the bottle deposit law. He has been appearing in commercials for the vote-no side because he believes the focus on an expanded bottle deposit law is missing the big picture. “It’s a feel-good proposition, but it has no meaningful result,” he said.
David Cash, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, disagrees. He acknowledges bottles are not a big portion of the state’s waste stream, but he says they do account for a significant amount of litter. “Sometimes you need a particular tool for a particular problem,” he said.