Re: [greenyes] Plastics News - Opinion Piece on state bottle bills, etc

[Helen Spiegelman <hspie@no.address>]

The cartoon contains an insight that supporters of bottle bills should pay 
attention to. Legislators have to be careful in crafting "producer 
responsibility" bills like bottle bills to pin the responsibility where it 
belongs and will do the most good.

The plastic container industry is not responsible for the design or 
production of beverage containers -- they are simply suppliers to the 
beverage industry. That is why effective bottle bills place responsibility 
on the brand-owners rather than the container producers. When the bottle 
manufacturer (or for that matter the retailer) is responsible for Coke and 
Pepsi's containers, this leaves Coke and Pepsi laughing all the way to the 
bank.

On the other hand, once brand-owners are responsible for making sure their 
bottles are returned and reused or recycled, then *they* will take steps to 
build strong recycling markets by specifying *to their suppliers* that the 
bottles should contain recycled content.

(Supply) chain reaction.

Helen.


At 02:37 PM 04/28/2003 -0400, lkingeco2@no.address wrote:
> Too bad about the cartoon with the opinion piece, which shifts the impact of
> what Steve Toloken wrote to a less balance perspective in my opinion.


http://www.plasticsnews.com/subscriber/opinion2.phtml?cat=5&id=1051284359