PUBLIC HEARING ON THE NYS RETURNABLE CONTAINER ACT
Assembly Committee on Environmental Conservation
Albany NY, March 10, 2003

Chairman DiNapoli, Honorable Members of the Committee, thank you for the privilege of appearing here today.

Like many of the speakers who testify at hearings like this, I represent a special interest group. Our special interest is the well-being of 5,000 neighborhood mini-marts and convenience stores, many of them independent, family-run enterprises, from Glens Falls to Great Neck.

Four million New Yorkers, including some in this room, will visit one of our stores during the next 24 hours to pick up a cup of coffee, a newspaper, a pack of cigarettes, a lottery ticket, a tank of gas -- God help them -- or some other item.

Convenience stores also sell beer and soft drinks, which are subject to the nickel deposit, and iced tea, sports drinks, bottled water, and other non-carbonated beverages, which are currently exempt but would require a deposit under the proposed law.

As business owners, parents and citizens, we share the commitment of New York State and its communities to recycling. But as the folks who get stuck with the labor costs, space requirements, and mess of physically handling and storing returnable, often unrinsed carbonated beverage containers, we have a different perspective on the idea of expanding the bottle bill.

For smaller stores with limited space and limited staff, redemption and storage of bottles and cans is a nuisance. Expanding the deposit law to non-carbonated beverages would make it a nightmare.

First, with limited space and limited volume, smaller stores do not have 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.

Let's assume a clerk's wages, employer taxes and benefits cost the store Nine Dollars per hour. You come in to redeem an empty six-pack of Pepsi. The transaction takes the clerk three minutes, and 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 Ninety Cents, for Six cans, or Fifteen Cents per can. Under the bottle bill, the store receives a handling fee of Two Cents per redeemed can, a fraction of the actual handling cost. So it's a losing proposition. And increasing by one-third the quantity of used bottles and cans you would have to handle and store makes it more of a losing proposition.

The second issue is the potential sanitation hazard. Many smaller stores now rely on food service as a

major product category, under license from the state Department of Agriculture and Markets. 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 32-gallon garbage bags full of empty soda and juice cans sitting around in a hallway. 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 or pizza or salads is an extra attraction for rodents, insects, and germs, especially during the summer.

Beyond the four walls of our stores, we see other questions surrounding a bigger bottle bill. If the State needs unclaimed deposits for operating revenue, doesn't that nickel, or dime, become more of a tax than a deposit?

How would it affect existing municipal recycling programs? Would the reduction in the number of bottles and cans in their recycling streams have a positive or negative effect on the economic viability of those programs?

And a word about fairness. In some parts of New York, our members operate down the road, or even right across the street from, a competing store operated by a Native American tribe. More often than not, when you buy a soft drink at a tribal store, you will not be charged the nickel deposit, because tribes typically claim immunity from state laws. If you increase the deposit to a dime as has been suggested, then you're effectively granting those competitors a price advantage of ten cents. If a bottle of Coke sells for One Dollar, that's a Ten Percent differential. If a dime is sufficient to deter people from littering, it's also enough to influence their choice of where to buy. When they choose to buy outside the reach of the bottle bill, not only does it cost us business, but the policy goal behind the deposit law is thwarted.

If ultimately the Legislature decides to pursue expansion of the bottle bill in spite of the doubts and potential consequences, NYACS would strongly recommend exploring an alternative to requiring retail stores to redeem deposit containers -- specifically, establishing a network of centralized redemption centers. Most retailers I work with would gladly relinquish the two-cent handling fee in exchange for being relieved of the costs, logistical headaches and sanitation risks.

Beneath the veneer of "bigger is better" rhetoric, there are many layers to the bottle bill issue that deserve closer scrutiny. Until these ramifications are fully examined and addressed, our Association remains opposed to expanding this law.

Thank you again for the opportunity to be heard.