Better Bottle Bill Theres Still Time to Sign! You Tube & Albany Times Union article...

YouTube video by Surfrider Foundation

Click the link below and an email will be sent to your Albany Assembly Members and State Senator but it will also be copied to Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Governor Eliot Spitzer.

http://actionnetwork.org/campaign/NY_bottle_bill

There is still time to help pass the better bottle bill.

It is a simple idea that all beverage containers carry a 5 cent deposit. It will help reduce litter and raise money for environmental programs in NYS.

Students Support Revised Bottle Bill

Expanding deposits to juice, bottled water containers designed to cut litter

By JULIE A. VARUGHESE, Special to the Times Union

ALBANY -- The New Rochelle High School environmental club, jolted by seeing drinking containers bobbing in Huguenot Lake in front of their school, lobbied Tuesday at the Capitol to push the "bigger, better" bottle bill through the state Senate.

"This bill is just so simple," said Emma Landau, one of about 15 students from the Westchester County school who carried signs promoting Gov. Eliot Spitzer's bill. "It does so much with just one small action."

Students joined the nonprofit ocean advocacy group Surfrider Foundation, government officials and a beverage company owner who argued that a proposed 5-cent deposit on juice and water containers -- which make up 25 percent of drink sales but 60 percent of containers found in trash -- needs the Legislature's approval.

The bill would help steer empty containers back to manufacturers for re-use, avoiding the 80,000 tons of greenhouse gases used in creating new products, said Jennifer Kozlowski, the governor's special assistant for the environment. The original bottle bill, passed in the early 1980s, created a 5-cent deposit for carbonated drink and beer containers. It's helped cut 70 percent of roadside litter, she said.

One beverage group supports the bill, which failed to win approval last year.

"They love to sell beer, water, but at the end of the day" they don't all accept the bottles, said Peter Sobol of the Empire State Beer Distributors Association.

Michael Rosen, of the Food Industry Alliance of New York, said the logistics are troubling. Under the bill, only bottles with New York universal product codes (UPCs) would be accepted for recycling, which means grocers must make special storage arrangements and manufacturers have to make the special UPCs, he said. Rosen said New York City grocers with limited space have trouble accommodating the bottle-accepting machines and do not have enough space or workers to sort out the non-New York containers.

Judith Enck, the governor's deputy secretary for environment, said retailers would get 3.5 cents for each bottle, up from the 2 cents they get now. The state gets the rest. Enck said the bill would reap $100 million for the Environmental Protection Fund, which supports initiatives such as land acquisitions.