HARTFORD — The co-chairs of the legislature’s Environment Committee are urging its colleagues to pass legislation that increases the bottle deposit fee from a nickel to a dime.
The legislation would also expand the current bottle bill, which is focused on mostly carbonated beverages and water to include juices, teas, and sports or energy drinks effective July 1, 2020. According to the Container Recycling Institute, it’s estimated that approximately $340 million new beverage containers per year would be covered.
The Finance, Revenue, and Bonding Committee has until Thursday afternoon to forward the bill to the House in order to keep it alive.
“It increases redemption rates. It increases recycling rates and gets the trash out of the blue bins, and actually recycles these bottles and cans,” Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford, said.
The bill, which increases the fee from a nickel to a dime, would also increase the amount of money redemption centers receive and lower the amount of money the state keeps from the unclaimed bottle deposits. The bill also allows distributors to keep 20 percent of the unclaimed bottle deposits.
The goal of the legislation is to get residents to redeem 90 percent of the containers that have a deposit on them.
Rep. Michael Demicco, D-Farmington, said the state’s bottle bill is more than 40 years old, and like anything else, “it needs to be modernized, upgraded, tweaked a little bit.”
“The goal is to increase the amount of recovered and recycled materials,” Demicco said.
He said they are trying to increase the value of the products that are recycled because putting them in the blue bin degrades the value of the recyclables.
Jennifer...
from News https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Raising-CT-bottle-fees-to-a-dime-nears-deadline-13804167.php
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