(WBEN) - The New York State Legislature held a hearing on Monday to hear testimony for consideration of a potential expansion of the Returnable Container Act, more commonly referred to as the "Bottle Bill".
Not much has changed with the law since its enactment in 1983, which entitles those returning certain bottles and cans 5 cents per-returned container.
As an effort to keep up with rising costs of inflation and continue to save valuable resources from going into landfills, lawmakers and advocates are proposing to increase the price of deposits to 10 cents, and allow more types of bottles and cans to be accepted like wine and liquor bottles, as well as iced tea, Gatorade and milk containers.
"We all know the Bottle Bill has been around for a long time, and it's done a great job in keeping certain material out of landfills, but it hasn't been changed in a long time," opened Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee Chair Deborah Glick. "There are additional costs that have just accrued over the years, we need to find legislative solutions to updating this in a way that makes sense and is helpful to our environment by continuing to remove more materials from the landfill."
This comes as great news for those bottle and can return center owners, who may see a nice influx of business.
"I think it's a wonderful thing for several reasons. It increases recycling. If you go to states that don't have a bottle bill, you see that there's bottles everywhere, there's no reason that those other bottles shouldn't be included in the law and improves on recycling more," said owner of BC's Can and Bottle Return, Aaron Van Camp in an interview with WBEN.
"As far as the increase in price, I think that's just like a given that should have happened a long time ago, it's been five cents since 1983. And I mean, the way inflation is, five cents is like the new penny right now, it needs to be a little bit more, I think, to entice people, and also help out people that thrive on that. There's like a large community of people that do really survive on or use that money to supplement their income, collecting bottles and cans. The [increase] will be great for them."
New York State says the Bottle Bill works and will continue to improve if passed on return rates and eliminate waste from landfills.
"It's estimated that the Bottle Bill has reduced roadside litter of containers by 70% average, redemption rate of 65% and has removed more than 10 million tons of containers from the waste stream," reports David Talley, Active Deputy Commissioner of the state's DEC Office of Remediation and Materials Management.
Van Camp agrees that New York State will see an increase in bottles and cans returned, resulting in a very high return rate for the state and less pollution. However, when it comes to bottle and can return business, he believes that the good operators will continue to operate while the others will eventually fizzle out.
"We're at a point now where I think it's stabilized out, where a lot of the good operators are succeeding and the people that weren't as good have fell out and there was a problem with volume at first. So many of these being opened, I think it's going to go back to a lot of centers are going to open after the increase happens. But then it will happen again, where they will level out or people who aren't operating as efficiently will probably go out of business again, but it's going to probably be very good for me at the beginning. But then I think it's going to be a dramatic increase in other people opening up and then leveling back out again."
The legislative session begins on Jan. 3.