Cleaning up litter: Who foots the bill?

The Northwest Corner is all atwitter over litter — and with good reason. There’s been a rash of trash on our roadsides lately.

The problem of litter and its possible solutions prompted two letters to the editor last week, along with an op-ed piece by Jane Oxford Keiter.

Keiter has been battling chronic littering along Long Pond Road in Salisbury, where she found hundreds of potato chip bags and beer cans, mostly of the same variety, which indicates multiple violations by perhaps one offender. She joked of setting up video surveillance cameras or using DNA testing to identify the slobs who did the dirty deeds. Letter writer Stuyvie Bearns, who lives in that same neighborhood, told of being in a state of “anger and disgust.� Paul Bartomioli thinks the state’s bottle law has outlived its usefulness.

Except for those swine who throw their garbage out car windows, just about everyone is against littering. The question is how to stop it. A bill wending its way through the Connecticut General Assembly, SB 357, would attempt to put the brakes on littering by expanding the state’s bottle deposit law to include not only beer and soda pop, but noncarbonated drinks such as flavored water, juice, iced teas and sports drinks.

On one level, it makes sense to expand the law to other containers similar in size to beer and soda. After all, why should drinkers of Perrier and Pelegrino escape the law while those who enjoy Budweiser and Pepsi get soaked? But the most pertinent question with the expansion of Connecticut’s bottle law is: Who pays for it? The increase in the volume of recycling will no doubt be a burden on retailers, many of whom are already struggling with rapidly rising wholesale food prices.

Under the current law originally enacted in 1980, retailers pay beverage container distributors 5 cents for each beer or carbonated soft drink container that the distributors deliver. Consumers pay that nickel back to retailers, who also keep the 5 cents for every unclaimed deposit.

For the retailers’ trouble, distributors pay them a handling fee of 1.5 cents on each beer container and 2 cents on each carbonated soft drink container consumers return. SB 357 raises this amount to 3 cents for all containers except beer and other malt beverages.

It sounds simple enough. Just make the wealthy distributors pay more. But common sense tells us they will not simply absorb the loss, but will instead pass some of that expense on to consumers. And since retailers are mostly against the new bill, you’d have to think the extra cent-and-a-half for each bottle or can would not be worth their time and trouble.

So it looks like everyone takes a hit under the new bill: consumers, who will pay higher prices for beverages; retailers, who will have to allocate more resources to their redemption programs; and distributors, who will have to spend more money reimbursing the retailers on handling fees.

How about if the General Assembly would just level with the people of Connecticut? Consumers will feel the pain with this proposal. There may be no other way to boost recycling rates and reduce roadside garbage. Yet we’d like to ask the state one question: When is the last time someone — anyone — was actually nabbed for littering and had the book thrown at him? Shouldn’t we look at enforcement, too?