New York Association of Convenience Stores

130 Washington Avenue, Suite 300, Albany NY 12210

TELEPHONE: (800) 33-NYACS or (518) 432-1400     FAX: (518) 432-7400

"Bottle Bill" Expansion Advancing in State Assembly

    Over the objections of NYACS, the New York State Assembly Committee on Codes February 15 endorsed legislation that would expand the state's existing deposit container law to cover bottles and cans of juice, iced tea, sports drink, and water.

    While supportive of recycling, NYACS maintains that the existing law requiring retailers to collect and redeem deposits on soft drinks and beer is already a nuisance for convenience stores with limited space and staff, but that the influx of additional containers would make it a logistical nightmare and pose a sanitation hazard.

    Echoing a February 1 endorsement by the Democratic-controlled Assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee, the Codes Committee voted 11-6 in favor of sending the "anti-litter" bill (A.2517) to the Ways and Means Committee, the final hurdle before going to the floor for a vote.

    The same bill has been introduced in the Republican-controlled state Senate but has not yet been considered by the Environmental Conservation Committee. NYACS and its retail and supplier allies hope to block the bill there.

    Proponents of the bill argue that the multitudes of juice, water, tea and sports drinks that fill beverage coolers these days didn't exist when the original bottle bill was enacted in 1982. Opponents point out that neither did municipal recycling programs, which in many communities provide free curbside pickup of the same recyclable glass and plastic containers targeted by the bill.

    NYACS joined representatives of the Food Industry Alliance, Beer Wholesalers Association, Coca Cola, and Pepsi Cola in lobbying individual Assembly, outlining the bill's adverse impacts on retailers, distributors and producers.

   "With limited space and limited volume, smaller stores are not able to offer the reverse vending machines for accepting returnable bottles and cans that you may see in supermarkets. In our stores, real, live employees handle returnables, and it costs money," said NYACS President James Calvin.

   "Let's assume a clerk's wages, employer taxes and benefits cost the store $9 per hour. You come in to redeem an empty six-pack of soda. The transaction takes the clerk three minutes; she spends another three minutes making sure the empties are clean and placing them in a holding bin in the back room. That's six minutes, or a labor cost of 90¢ for 6 cans, or 15¢ per can.

   "Under the current bottle bill, the store receives a handling fee of 2¢ per redeemed can, a fraction of the actual handling cost. So it's a losing proposition. Even increasing the handling fee to 3½¢, as proposed under the bill, would be insufficient to cover the actual handling cost. And increasing by 40% the quantity of used bottles and cans stores would have to handle and store would make it even more of a losing proposition.

   "The second issue is the potential sanitation hazard," Calvin pointed out. "Many smaller stores today rely on food service as a major product category, under license from the state. When you leave empty soda or juice cans sitting around your house in mid-August, what do they attract? Now imagine if you left three or four large bags full of empty soda and juice cans sitting around in a hallway waiting for pickup. Expand the bottle bill, and that's what you're likely to find in the tiny back room of smaller stores, just steps away from the food counter.

   "The last thing we need in a store that sells sandwiches, pizza or salads is an extra attraction for rodents, insects, and germs, especially in mid-July. Or, do the sponsors expect the retailer to have sufficient land and money to build freestanding sheds dedicated to storing redeemed containers awaiting pick-up?

   "The third issue," said Calvin, "has to do with importation of containers from the five states that border New York, none of which require deposits on non-carbonated beverages. Passage of this bill would unleash a flood of bottles and cans across state borders into New York for redemption, placing additional handling and storage burdens on retailers. In fact, the bill sanctions the practice of redeeming out-of-state containers at New York stores as long as the enterprising consumer limits it to two cases (48 containers) at a time."