We know there are fewer bottles being recycled, but are people really buying less bottled water?

Recently you may have heard or read that the state isn’t taking in as much money from unclaimed deposits on plastic water bottles as some officials had hoped.

In 2009 Connecticut expanded its bottle bill to put five-cent deposits on plastic water bottles, the same deposit Connecticut consumers pay on beer and soda bottles and cans. But where the bottlers and distributors keep the nickels from unredeemed beer and soda containers, the state would keep the unclaimed water deposits.

When the legislation was passed in 2009, state officials said they expected to take in $17 million a year in unclaimed water bottle deposits. At 20 bottles per dollar, that would have required 340 million bottles going unredeemed every year, out of estimated annual sales of more than 500 million bottles, a number used by both the state and the Container Recycling Institute, a bottle-bill proponent.

The expansion took effect on Oct. 1, 2009. While numbers for the full fiscal year (which ended June 30) are not yet available, in April it was reported that the state only collected $680,000 from January through March of 2010. That’s 13.6 million unredeemed bottles for those of you without a calculator handy.

As far back as 2007, CRRA had been warning of the unintended consequences of putting a deposit on water bottles – namely, the adverse impact it would have on curbside recycling. CRRA processes the recyclables collected from residents of 76 cities and towns at no cost to those towns. (Those same towns pay as much as $69 per ton to bring us their garbage, underscoring the fiscal benefits of recycling.)

The larger of our two recycling systems, the Mid-Connecticut Project, has an annual budget of about $1.4 million, all paid for by proceeds from the sale of paper, cardboard, aluminum, steel, glass and plastic we sort and bale at our recycling processing facility in Hartford. In fact, because the 64 Mid-Connecticut Project recycling towns continue to increase their recycling rate, they’ve generated enough revenue to allow us to pay them rebates in 2008 and 2009. (We don’t have final figures for this year yet.)

That’s all good news. But the situation could have been even better, because it appears people have dramatically reduced their purchases of bottled water. How do we know? If the state is collecting fewer unredeemed deposits than it anticipated, then if consumers are buying the same number of bottles, CRRA and other recyclers should be seeing more.

However, our Mid-Connecticut system saw a substantial dropoff in the amount of polyethelene (PET, or #1 plastic), the material of which water and soda bottles are made, starting last October. Consider: in the nine months before the expansion took effect, we processed and shipped about 223 tons per month of PET. In the first nine months after the expansion, we processed and shipped about 156 tons per month, a 30-percent drop.

This chart shows those month-by-month figures. The dropoff hit in October 2009, exactly when the expansion hit.



The 67 tons of plastic represents about 29 million fewer bottles purchased in Mid-Connecticut towns. Extrapolated over the population of the entire state, that’s about 90 million fewer water bottles in those nine months – far more than the difference between what the state anticipated and what actually happened.

More to the point, that loss of plastic hurts curbside recycling, which, as we said earlier, depends on revenues from sales of recycled materials. In June, a ton of #1 plastic fetched about $400 on the commodities market. Commodity prices fluctuate, but even at $300 per ton those 67 tons per month cost the Mid-Connecticut system just under $250,000, or almost one-fifth of the entire year’s budget.

Shameless plug dept.

Paul Nonnenmacher, our Director of Public Affairs, recently spoke to the Goshen Library Directors about recycling, including CRRA's new single-stream recycling initiative.

Lynn Steinmayer, Director of the Goshen Public Library, summed up the presentation on her blog.

CRRA is eager to keep people informed about recycling, trash disposal and other important environmental issues. If your city or town -- or, for that matter, your school, civic organization or service club -- would like a presentation, please call Paul Nonnenmacher at (860) 757-7700.

CRRA bringing the future of recycling to Connecticut

CRRA is working on two fronts to bring the future of recycling to Connecticut.

Hartford pilot program

CRRA has joined forces with the City of Hartford and the National Recycling Partnership in an effort to help increase recycling participation and tonnages.

A pilot program funded by the National Recycling Partnership -– a coalition of grocery, food and beverage producers and retailers under the direction of the National Recycling Coalition -– will introduce single-stream recycling to about 5,000 households throughout the city. Unlike the familiar curbside recycling system, in which paper and cardboard are separated from bottles, cans and other containers, single-stream recycling means that a resident can put all his recyclables into the same barrel, making it easier for people to recycle. And because the Hartford system will use 64-gallon barrels, rather than the 14-gallon bins currently in use, people will be able to recycle more material.

“We value our relationships with our host communities, so we were delighted to be part of this effort to help Hartford improve its recycling,” said Thomas D. Kirk, CRRA president. “In many other cities, single-stream has dramatically improved recycling rates. We believe this is the future of recycling.”

CRRA’s Mid-Connecticut Project provides disposal of recyclables to Hartford and 69 other communities at its Hartford recycling facility, but because single-stream recyclables require different sorting and processing systems than the current dual-stream system, recyclables collected from homes participating in the pilot program will be delivered to a single-stream facility in Auburn, Mass.

CRRA provides its recycling services at no charge thanks to revenues from selling recyclables to companies who turn them into new products. To bring the pilot program to fruition, CRRA, the National Recycling Partnership and FCR, Inc., which operates CRRA’s recycling facility, reached an agreement which guaranteed CRRA would not lose any revenue during the program’s 12-month duration.

Single-stream for all Mid-Conn towns

Meanwhile, CRRA is moving toward retrofitting its Mid-Connecticut Project recycling center to accept single-stream recycling deliveries from all 70 Mid-Conn towns.

Earlier this month, the Policies & Procurement Committee of the CRRA board approved spending $3 million to retrofit the facility. The measure must still be approved by the full board at its meeting on April 24.

For more than a year, towns and private haulers from all over the state have been asking CRRA to switch to single-stream recycling. Haulers like it because they can automate their collections, meaning fewer worker injuries, lower worker's compensation costs and more efficient collections, while towns like it because they believe -- as does CRRA -- that single-stream will reduce the amount of trash they pay to dispose of while increasing (at least for Mid-Connecticut Project towns) the $10-per-ton rebate they receive for bringing their recyclables to CRRA.

We'll keep you posted.