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.

A sober look at trash-to-energy

The New York Times this week spent a good deal of bandwidth on the merits of trash-to-energy.

On Monday, The Times published a story headlined "Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags" that described the use of trash-to-energy in Denmark.

According to the story:

Their use has not only reduced the country’s energy costs and reliance on oil and gas, but also benefited the environment, diminishing the use of landfills and cutting carbon dioxide emissions. The plants run so cleanly that many times more dioxin is now released from home fireplaces and backyard barbecues than from incineration.

The story cites a study done by EPA and North Carolina State University that determined trash-to-energy is much more environmentally-responsible than landfilling.

On Tuesday, The Times's online edition kicked off a discussion entitled "Should the U.S. Burn or Bury Its Trash?"

The discussion ventured into the ideas of zero-waste and massive recycling systems as practiced in Japan and some European nations. These are both worthy ideals, but most Americans want convenience -- even if it costs a little more -- and these systems aren't convenient enough.

Connecticut's solid waste hierarchy, as established in Sec. 22a-228b of the Connecticut General Statutes, has led to Connecticut's recycling about 25 percent of its solid waste. There's certainly room for improvement with some reasonable steps -- more processing infrastructure to cut down on transportation costs, help for communities that want to switch to single-stream recycling and automated collection but can't afford the capital investment, more enforcement of the state's recycling laws and regulations -- but even with all these steps, until we get to zero-waste we're still going to have garbage to get rid of. Trash-to-energy really is the best option.

CRRA on the air

This week's edition of "Face Connecticut," which airs Sunday at 6 a.m. on WTIC-AM and WTIC-FM, will feature a conversation about single-stream recycling and the closing of the Hartford landfill.

Speaking of single-stream recycling, our conversion to next-generation recycling is off to a great start. Already we're seeing double-digit-percent increases in recycling tonnages from towns such as Avon, Cromwell, Farmington, Newington and Vernon.

The more tons we recycle, the fewer tons of trash we're making. For towns that recycle with CRRA, it's simple math: trash costs upwards of $98.50 per ton to dispose of; recycling costs nothing or, in the case of our Mid-Connecticut Project recycling towns, earns $10 per ton for the town 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.