VIRGINIA SHOULD HAVE A BOTTLE BILL

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 9, 1993                   TAG: 9302090358
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DANIEL E. FLAGE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
VIRGINIA SHOULD HAVE A BOTTLE BILL
IF VIRGINIA passed a bottle bill, there would be a deposit of 5 to 10 cents on every beverage bottle and can sold in the commonwealth. Passage of such a bill is favored by four out of five Virginians; I believe it is time to pass it.
Since many municipalities now have recycling programs that take care of the very bottles and cans on which we might be asked to pay a deposit, some claim that a bottle bill is no longer necessary. Before you agree, look along the roadsides or walk through a parking lot: You will find cans and bottles in various states of imperfection. When those who want to put their kids through college on recycled cans are getting less than 1 cent per can, there's little incentive to pick them up.
Compare Virginia with states like Iowa and Michigan, states with a bottle bill. There you'll see a fraction of the litter along the roads. Should you see a can or bottle in the morning, you're virtually guaranteed that one of the numerous scroungers will have it picked up before nightfall. Passage of a bottle bill should reduce the cost of cleaning up litter along the commonwealth's highways and byways.
But you don't have to go for a drive to discover that voluntary recycling isn't keeping cans and bottles out of our landfills - where they rest for all eternity like bodies in graves, with little hope of resurrection and no hope of decomposition.
Walk down the street on a garbage-collection day. Be nosy and peek in the trash cans or notice what can be seen through the trash bags of your non-recycling neighbors.
Odds are you're going to see bottles or cans. Would they be there if they were nickels or dimes?
Doesn't the passage of a bottle bill result in all kinds of bizarre behavior? It depends upon what you count as "bizarre."
One day a sales representative in Iowa was sipping on a cola while using a public telephone. Before leaving the booth, he was accosted by a pair of enterprising 8-year-olds who asked, "When you're done with the can may we have it?"
A college class in Michigan was planning a field trip to Chicago. Knowing that all appeals to the college administration for funds would he futile and that it is "politically incorrect" to request travel funds from parents, they scoured the Michigan roadways and recovered enough beverage containers to charter a bus and pay for hotel accommodations and meals.
In bottle-bill states, I've heard tales that hunting rifles, Cadillacs, even houses are "made" from beverage cans and bottles. In some states, expressions like "aluminum at 1 o'clock" are common in moving vehicles. Dedicated can- and bottle-scroungers attest to the grandeur of the activity: "It's fun! Tramping around in the outdoors is a healthful activity! And sweetest of all, Uncle Sam has not yet put a blank in Form 1040 to report collecting someone else's deposits!!!"
If this is bizarre behavior, I think we can live with it.
A bottle bill would help keep Virginia clean and green. It would decrease garbage buried in landfills, thereby slowing the increase in garbage-collection costs. And if it turns you into a scrounger, it might even help put your kids through college, or buy a new car, or . . . .
I only hope cigarette packaging would be added to the bill: From 300 feet, even an experienced scrounger occasionally confuses discarded cigarette packs with aluminum cans.

Dan Flage is an assistant professor of philosophy at James Madison University.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB