They have pledged to help fix U.S. recycling, but for decades the companies have fought against “bottle bills,” which result in more bottles and cans being recycled but are costly for the industry.
Recycling is struggling in much of the United States, and companies like Coca-Cola say they are committed to fixing it. Eye Cream Jar
The beverage industry helps pay for pizza parties celebrating top elementary school recyclers and lends money to companies that process used plastic. Coca-Cola and Pepsi, along with Dow, the plastics producer, support nonprofit groups like Keep America Beautiful, which organize events like litter cleanups. A recent video funded partly by Keep America Beautiful featured models dancing through a recycling facility in Brooklyn, which one advertising writer said makes “recycling sexy.” By 2030, Coca-Cola wants all of its packaging to be made from at least 50 percent recycled content.
But one approach to recycling that many of these companies do not support has proved to actually work: container deposit laws, more commonly known as bottle bills, which cost them lots of money.
In the 10 states where consumers can collect a few cents when they return an empty bottle or can, recycling rates for those containers are often significantly higher. In some cases, they are more than twice as high as in states without such deposits.
For decades, beverage companies, retailers and many of the nonprofit groups they control have fought to kill bottle bill proposals across the country — with great success. Since 1987, only one state, Hawaii, has passed a bottle bill. This year, such measures have been proposed in at least eight states. Nearly all have been rejected or failed to gain traction.
The result? Recycling in much of the country still depends almost entirely on the good will of consumers to place their used containers in a bin for pickup. The process is convenient, but means millions of bottles and cans head straight to a dump instead.
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