Given Donald Trump’s 19th-century fixation on fossil fuels — Venezuelan crude, at the moment — and given his administration’s attacks on efforts to slow climate change and develop more sources of clean energy, a citizen might ask: “What’s the point of recycling?”
The fatalism is understandable, given Trump’s reckless promotion of oil, gas and coal — the leading drivers of climate change. Why make the effort on the local level to reduce your carbon footprint if, on a global scale, the U.S. officially rejects efforts to keep the planet livable for generations to come?
Why bother?
Why invest in an electric car, or even a hybrid?
Why install solar panels on your roof?
And this year Marylanders could ask: “Are we really going to fuss about a 10-cent deposit on bottles and cans when the Environmental Protection Agency won’t even acknowledge that humans cause global warming?”
Well, yeah.
The Trump administration has already inflicted a lot of damage on national efforts to deal with climate change; far more damage than environmental advocates had expected. But, at the micro level, we each still have a hand in environmental stewardship. We can’t surrender to the retrograde mentality that rejects scientific alarms about climate — not if we really care about the world that our children and grandchildren will inherit.
So, down on the city and suburban streets where most of us live, the opportunities to express a belief in the future — that we could have a better, smarter, healthier and more sustainable society — still exist, despite Trump.
There’s curbside recycling. Even though we’ve had those bins for decades, in Maryland, only about 25% of the glass, plastic and aluminum we use — mainly from beverages — flows into the recycling stream. We’ve seen that disappointing level of participation for several years.
Which is why a 10-cent or 15-cent deposit on bottles and cans makes way too much sense. It’s an incentive to get more people to recycle.
There’s another effort underway in the Maryland General Assembly to make it so across the state. Let’s finally do this.
Past efforts have failed because of intense opposition from beverage industry lobbyists — as many as 26 of them retained during a 90-day legislative session a few years ago. Rather than describe it as a deposit that you get back if you recycle a bottle or can, the industry calls it a tax that will further burden consumers.
It’s a tired, old argument that has sounded increasingly ridiculous with the passage of time.
Deposits on bottles have been around in some states for more than 50 years. [Ten states currently operate with so-called Bottle Bills, incluing New York, California, Michigan and Iowa.] A nickel or dime deposit creates an incentive for consumers to bring their empty containers to a recycling center or supermarket, outfitted with reverse vending machines, and get their money back.
Pardon me while I indulge one paragraph of when-I-was-a-boyism:
When I was a boy on the South Shore of Massachusetts, we had door-to-door bottle drives to raise money for Little League uniforms. People saved their wine, beer and soda bottles and, instead of redeeming them at the local supermarket, gave them to us. The Little League got a nickel for every bottle we returned. The supermarket sent the bottles back to beverage distributors. The distributors washed the bottles and used them again, and the kids got uniforms.
It was no big deal. It was part of life in New England — a form of recycling before we called it that.
Massachusetts and nine other states have deposits, and they all report a much higher rate of recycling and a much lower rate of plastic, glass and aluminum going into landfills or ending up in the landscape and waterways.
The Sierra Club of Maryland believes legislation to finally create a deposit system here could eventually achieve a 90% recovery rate. And when you consider our states’ consumption — some 5.5 billion beverage containers sold annually — that’s a lot of glass, plastic and aluminum being reused in some way.
How does that help reduce the effects of climate change while the Trump administration diddles away precious time and resources on fossil fuel extraction?
“By reducing the production of new cans and bottles from virgin materials,” says the Sierra Club, “the additional recycling from this program would eliminate 231,707 metric tons of CO2 annually, the equivalent of removing the emissions of 50,371 cars.”
That sounds like extremely wishful thinking. But, given the retrograde policies of the current president, someone’s gotta give it a shot.
If you want to see what bottle-and-can redemption looks and feels like, the Waterfront Partnership is teaming up with environmental groups to host a demonstration event on Jan. 31 from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Peabody Heights Brewery. Bonus: You can get 10 cents for every bottle or can you bring there.
Dan Rodricks’ column appears weekly in the Fishbowl. He can be reached at djrodricks@gmail.com
