Expanded bottle bill would turn more trash into more cash

[MADem]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/31/for-poor-expanded-bottle-bill-would-turn-more-trash-into-more-cash/pdzuaUUqdcVDiyREN7jAZP/story.html

Before dawn most mornings, Jose Lopez and his father slip on rubber gloves and steer their old pickup through Allston and Brighton searching for cans and bottles littering streets, parks, and alleys, as well as those destined for landfills in dumpsters and trash cans.

They don’t work for the city, but the men do serve the public, and they make a living from their long days scouring Boston, enough to afford a cramped, three-bedroom apartment in Allston and necessities for their family of seven.


If a ballot question that would expand the state’s bottle deposit law passes next week, it would allow them to redeem bottles from water, sports drinks, and other non-carbonated beverages that they now ignore. That would provide a major financial boost to their family and help clean up their neighborhood, they said....

[procon]

1. SOP in California

We've had similar laws for recyclable cans and bottles for years, and a new one for restricting plastic shopping bags is about to go into effect.

[MADem]

2. This was cruising to easy passage in MA until an oppo group started griping with a false

advertising ad that pretended that 90+ % of Bay Staters had access to curbside recycling. It's not true--the number is around forty percent, and the rest of that crap litters the roads or ends up in landfills.

They're doing it in ME and they're surviving. I favor adoption of the measure but we'll see--it's amazing what lobbyists will gin up and it's amazing what people will swallow.