I am responding to the repeated call for a deposit on drink bottles and cans. For several years now, my wife and I have picked up the trash on two miles of heavily used county roads, and our experience is that we find much more paper and plastic than “redeemable” litter. Starbucks, McDonalds, and other fast-food outlets generate far more litter than bottles and cans.
Also, I question if the benefit of bottle-deposit programs exceeds the cost of putting the infrastructure in place. Computers will need to be reprogrammed at every outlet selling bottled drinks. Redemption equipment will need to be purchased and centers set up. And it still wouldn’t cover the soft drinks sold in paper cups.
I recently visited the Hayden Meadows Lowe’s store, which is beside an Oregon bottle redemption center, and noticed the long line of people with garbage bags full of bottles and cans. If I was a retailer, I certainly would not want them for neighbors.
And the redemption centers at supermarkets are often nearly as bad, a blight on the attractiveness of their operations.
So, let’s either leave things as they are, or develop a system that controls the real cause of litter — people.
