Vt. trash bill loaded with bottle law, bag ban
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A measure to push recycling and stop trash from going to landfills got bogged down in a Vermont Senate committee Friday in a debate over expanding bottle deposits and adding a ban on plastic grocery bags.
The House passed a bill in early March calling for a study of how various waste streams are handled and setting goals for banning recyclable materials from landfills.
But as the Senate Natural Resources Committee finished work on the measure Friday, it added two measures. One calls for a ban on plastic grocery bags, while the other would expand the state's deposits on beverage bottles to include plastic water and juice containers.
Critics of the amendments said lawmakers had not had enough time to study them, while supporters said the issues had been raised before and it was time to act on them.
It was another example of a traditional dance late in legislative sessions when lawmakers try to attach stalled projects to other bills in hopes they'll win passage.
Sometimes there are tough questions about whether the added-on items are closely enough related to the bill to which they're being attached. For example, Senate supporters of a measure to allow doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of medical to terminally ill patients who ask for it were defeated in their attempt Thursday to attach what they called "death with dignity" legislation to a bill regulating tanning beds.
Other times, the last-minute amendment can even run counter to the underlying intent of the bill to which it's being attached.
Sen. Virginia Lyons, D-Chittenden, and Rep. Tony Klein, D-East Montpelier, chairs of the Senate and House Natural Resources and Energy committees, respectively, said that was the case with the addition of the bottle bill expansion to the solid waste bill.
They said the economics of the recycling expansion likely won't work if plastic bottles are pulled out of the waste stream, denied to recyclers and instead become part of a deposit-and-redemption system.
Doing so would "reduce the economic power of the bill itself" and hurt the chances that the remaining parts of the recycling system, which produce less income for the industry, would be able to meet the ambitious goals set out in the underlying bill.
Klein noted that the underlying bill calls for the state Agency of Natural Resources to study all aspects of solid waste management in the state and report back to lawmakers before the end of the year.
"After that study, it may very well be apparent that the expanded bottle bill is the way to go," Klein said. "We don't know that now."
Vermont has had a deposit-and-return system for soft drink and beer bottles and cans since the 1970s, later adding other types of bottles, but not yet plastic juice and water bottles.
Lauren Hierl, an environmental health advocate with the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, hailed the Senate committee's addition of the amendment.
"The Bottle Bill is by far our most successful recycling program, so we are thrilled to see the Natural Resources committee vote in favor of expanding it to cover more beverages," she said in a statement.
