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[greenyes] Re: [heur] Re: [greenyes] CT bottle bill expansion mentioned in Worcester T&G


Or as a Green Party fellow said, we can just wave from the hip (if speaking annoys (view as an interruption) the speaker). But that requires the ability and awareness to be looking around the room and that May take away from your concentration of what the Speaker is saying. A couple of times, I watched the British parliament on C-Spam and they do the "hear, here" thing there.

A socialist suggested that we do that at a green party meeting, but like I said, it was nipped in the bud by an American (Not that the Labor party is much if at all better than the Democrats).

Good God could be said to be spoken by the department of redudancy department. I'm not much of one for authoritarianism so I still say, (or more accurately in this case write), "hear, here".

Working for peace and cooperation,

Davids Goodman (aka Mike M)

----- Original Message ----- From: "Eileen Sousley" <EBSousley@no.address>
To: "Mike Morin" <mikemorin@no.address>; "Green Yes" <greenyes@no.address>
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 12:45 PM
Subject: RE: [heur] Re: [greenyes] CT bottle bill expansion mentioned in Worcester T&G


Looks like we're both a bit off on that one. It should be "hear, hear"
according to http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhear.html. I guess
I'm just a bit of a yahoo.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Morin [mailto:mikemorin@no.address]
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 3:34 PM
To: Eileen Sousley; Green Yes
Subject: Re: [heur] Re: [greenyes] CT bottle bill expansion mentioned in
Worcester T&G

I appreciate that, but isn't it "hear here"?

MM

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eileen Sousley" <EBSousley@no.address>
To: "Mike Morin" <mikemorin@no.address>; "Green Yes"
<greenyes@no.address>
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 4:50 AM
Subject: RE: [heur] Re: [greenyes] CT bottle bill expansion mentioned in
Worcester T&G


Here, here!

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Morin [mailto:mikemorin@no.address]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 5:26 PM
To: Green Yes
Subject: [heur] Re: [greenyes] CT bottle bill expansion mentioned in
Worcester T&G

There otter be a deposit on all containers (e.g. pickle jars) and
packaging.

For example, when you buy an eraser, you could get it out of an old
fishbowl, not laminated in a paper and plastic mini-package hanging on a
metal display case.

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but Corporations should somehow
be made responsible for all the unnecessary packaging (waste) that
occurs in today's globalized (long transport) consumer society.

We need to go back to producing more things on a local level. Then we
wouldn't need anway near as much packaging as currently occurs in our
oil-junkie distribution system.

P&C,

MM
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pat Franklin" <pfranklin@no.address>
To: "Green Yes" <greenyes@no.address>
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 2:13 PM
Subject: [greenyes] CT bottle bill expansion mentioned in Worcester T&G


Those interested in beverage container deposit issues might find this
interesting. Only 2 states (Maine and California) have expanded their
laws
to include non-carbonated beverages. This would be an exciting
breakthrough for container deposit supporters everywhere.



Front-Page - Sunday's CT Post

Battle over bottles brewing in Capitol

Lines drawn on deposit expansion for plain water


KEN DIXON dixon.connpost@no.address


HARTFORD - A battle royal is shaping up over a controversial expansion
of
the bottle-deposit law that would require new, nickel deposits on
millions
of bottles of non-carbonated water sold in Connecticut.

First-term Senate President Pro Tempore Donald E. Williams Jr. is
putting
the weight of his office behind the legislation, which nearly died in
the
Environment Committee, but was massively amended and revived in the
Senate
on April 20.

After passing the Senate 31-3, it's now sitting on the House calendar,

where, Capitol insiders believe, it doesn't have enough votes - yet -
to
pass the 151-member chamber.

Indeed, Williams, D-Brooklyn, hosted a Capitol reception Thursday
evening
for environmental activists, whom he has asked for help. He said that
industry "disinformation" through a late-breaking but high-powered
lobbying campaign, is attempting to kill the bill in the House.

Opponents of the bottle-deposit expansion include grocery and
convenience-store owners and beverage bottlers and distributors, many
of
whom believe that the current bottle-deposit program should be
abandoned
and
the curbside-recycling program expanded.

Store owners led by the Connecticut Food Association say the
deposit-return program is messy, smelly, unsanitary and costly enough
without
expanding
it
to include millions more water bottles each year.

But Williams, a former chairman of the Environment Committee and Rep.
Richard Roy, D-Milford, a current co-chairman, said the bill's a
logical
way
to take the polyethylene terephthalate (or PET) plastic bottles out of
the
waste stream and away from the state's solid waste incinerators.

"There's no question that we have a fight in terms of the soda lobby
and
bottlers versus environmentalists," Williams said in an interview last

week.
"In the lobbying campaign and the radio ads that are being run,
they're
trying to convince people it's a tax and the costs were astronomical."

With no incentive to recycle the now-ubiquitous water bottles, more
and
more
are ending up littering beaches, soccer and Little League fields and
highways. Ironically, Williams said, the market has never been higher
for
PET plastic, which is used to manufacture fleece sweaters and other
synthetic fabrics. Williams and Roy agree if the curbside recycling
program includes all bottles and cans, more people will simply throw
away the containers.

"Forty to 60 percent of roadside litter are portable beverage
containers,"
Williams said. "Curbside recycling is great for your spaghetti-sauce
jars
and cans of Campbell's Soup, but portable beverage containers don't
get
caught."

Roy, in an interview Friday, conceded that there doesn't seem to be
enough
support in the House, which has a 99-52 Democratic majority.

"Would it pass today? I don't know, but I certainly hope we vote on it
by
the end of next week," Roy said. "It's Sen. Williams' bill and it's
important."
Roy agreed that lobbyists are pulling out the stops and using
"fear-mongering" tactics to drum up opposition. "They're saying, Even
though we produce, deliver and sell the stuff, let's make taxpayers
pay the bill,'
" Roy said. "They say curbside recycling is cheaper, but it's not.
They
don't want to take responsibility for putting the trash in the
system."

Roy, as committee co-chairman, voted against an amendment that
essentially
gutted the bill, restricting the expansion of the redemption law until

surrounding states adopted similar legislation.

Williams stripped the amendment in the Senate, reverting it back to
the
original bill and sending industry lobbyists into high gear.
Betty McLaughlin, director of environmental affairs for the
Connecticut
Audubon Society, warned last week that opponents, including Coke,
Pepsi
and
Poland Spring, all of which are major players in the state's lucrative

non-carbonated water industry, are spending more than a
quarter-million
dollars to help defeat the bill.
"These giant corporations and trade associations have hired the most
influential and best-paid lobbyists at the Capitol," McLaughlin said.
"Together these lobbying firms have 25 to 30 professional lobbyists
spending all day pressuring legislators to vote against the
environment."

But Grace Nome, president of the Connecticut Food Association, who
represents supermarkets and groceries, said the bill is ill conceived
and
anti-business.
"Expansion of the bottle law is probably the worst thing you could do
to
the
grocery industry," Nome said last week, adding that it could cost the
state's grocers another $16 million a year to expand current
redemption
equipment and accommodate the millions of additional plastic bottles.

"We learned to manage what we've had to manage, but we put our cost to

manage the bottle law on your food," Nome said. She said that because
it's
usually easier to redeem containers at groceries that liquor stores,
the
food industry redeems 2.5 times what they sell.

"The point is, that maybe people who are supporting this don't
understand
the complexity of the issue," said Nome, a 26-year veteran of Capitol
lobbying. "Fifty percent of the cans and bottles in the garbage are
deposit bottles."

Nome said she had hoped that the bill would have come up from a House
debate last Wednesday or Thursday, when she believed there weren't
enough
votes
to
approve it.

"We have offered as a industry to sit down and talk about litter,"
Nome
said. "The ShopRite in Milford has offered to pay for the cleanup of
the
Milford beaches."

Adding water bottles to the recycling stream will exacerbate an
already
dirty business.

"The grocery industry does more for the people of this state than
anything
else," Nome said, predicted that if the bill passes and takes effect
next
Jan. 1, water bottles from New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island
would
be
redeemed by the thousands at Connecticut supermarkets.

Paul Nonnenmacher, director of public affairs for the Connecticut
Resources Recovery Authority, which operates the state's solid-waste
programs,
said
Friday the CRRA backs the bottle-bill expansion.

But it would come at a price to taxpayers, because the sale of
recyclables
lowers tipping fees for municipal garbage trucks at the regional
garbage-to-energy incinerators, he said.

"We support the idea, but as we had told the Environment Committee,
when
we
testified, there's going to be a revenue loss by taking away these
recyclable commodities, it will have an impact on tip fees,"
Nonnenmacher
said.

He said that the CRRA would probably become more actively in favor of
the
legislation, if it included a provision to pass along a $20
million-a-year
windfall to the authority. It's called "escheats" and it coincides
with
the
unclaimed bottle deposits that distributors and bottlers retain from
bottles and cans that are tossed into the waste stream, rather than
redeemed,
each
year.

Nonnenmacher said the CRRA is eagerly awaiting a state Department of
Environmental Protection study of the state's solid-waste projects and
the
creation of a new solid-waste management plan by the end of the year.

"This is an opportunity for the DEP to take a holistic approach," he
said,
"because each of these items is a piece of a bigger puzzle."
Ken Dixon, who covers the Capitol, can be reached at (860) 549-4670.








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