Recycleutah.org



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UTAH BOTTLE BILL

SINGLE-USE, DISPOSABLE BEVERAGE CONTAINERS

FACT SHEET

• Americans throw away approximately 28 billion bottles every year;[1] only about 25% of beverage bottles are recycled.[2]

• Discarded beverage containers take up valuable landfill space, where they may take up to 1,000 years to break down.

• Discarded beverage containers litter on our state’s roads, national and state parks, and other public places, negatively affecting Utah's billion-dollar tourist industry.

• Disposable beverage containers require tremendous amounts of water and energy to manufacture and transport.

• Disposable beverage containers cost taxpayers and state and local governments money to clean up, landfill, and recycle.

Did you know . . .

• The production of plastic water bottles alone is estimated to require 15-17 million barrels of oil (enough to fuel more than 100,000 cars for an entire year) each year.[3]

• Beverage containers and lids comprise 26% of marine debris.[4]

• If we recycled 75% we could save 1 billion gallons of oil and 44 million cubic yards of landfill space annually.

The Solution: A State Bottle Bill

How It Works: A bottle bill is a law that requires distributors/retailers to collect a refundable deposit on beverage containers, usually 5 –10 cents, that would be refunded when consumers return the empty bottles to a certified recycling center.

➢ Ten (10) U.S. states and Guam have enacted a bottle bill, and even more states are introducing bottle bills and expanded bottle bills this year.[5]

• Increases Recycling Rates. States with bottle bills have a beverage container recycling rate more than two and a half times higher than states without bottle bills.[6]

• Reduces Litter. Beverage container litter reductions have consistently been between 70 and 84%, and total litter has been reduced between 34 and 47%.[7]

• Conserves Water, Energy and Resources. Recycling aluminum takes 95% less energy than manufacturing it from scratch; plastics, 70%; and glass, 40%.

• Saves Governments and Taxpayers Money. They reduce litter and shift the costs of disposal and recycling to the producers and consumers of the containers.

• Creates Jobs. The recycling sector employs more people than mining or disposal.[8]

• May Generate Revenue for the State. Many states' legislation provides that unredeemed deposits go to the state.

• Have Widespread Support. The majority of Americans support a state or national bottle bill.[9]

• Complements Curbside Recycling Programs.[10]

➢ Unlike curbside programs, bottle bills target containers purchased and consumed away from home.

➢ Participation rates are much higher with bottle bills than with curbside programs because of the bottle bill's financial incentive to recycle.

➢ Materials collected through deposit programs are of a much higher quality than materials collected through curbside recycling programs.

➢ Unlike curbside recycling, recycling under a bottle bill is not funded by the government and taxpayers, but instead by producers and consumers of bottled beverages.

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[1] Plastic Recycling Facts, Earth911, available at .

[2] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 10 Fast Facts on Recycling, available at .

[3] Fox, Catherine Clark. Drinking Water: Bottled or From the Tap? National Geographic, available at .

[4] Trash Travels: From Our Hands to the Sea, Around the Globe, and Through Time, International Coastal Cleanup 2009 report, The Ocean Conservancy, available at .

[5] Those states are California, Connecticut, Hawai'i, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont.

[6] Gitlitz, Jenny, Facts About Beverage Container Wasting and Replacement, citing Understanding Beverage Container Recycling: A Value Chain Assessment (2002), available at .

[7] Litter Studies in Bottle Bill States, Bottle Bill Resource Guide, available at .

[8] More Bottles, More Jobs, A Survey of Redemption Centers in New York State, NYPIRG (Feb. 2013), available at ; Economic Impacts of the B.C. Recycling Regulation. Gardner Pinfold Consulting (August 31, 2008), available at .

[9] Opinion Polls, Bottle Bill Resource Guide, available at .

[10] McCarthy, James E. Bottle Bills and Curbside Recycling: Are They Compatible? Congressional Research Service (1993).

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