Is Michigan's bottle deposit law too much?
A buck and a quarter a year is the estimated loss consumers ultimately bear because of the the bottle law.
Scales gets a H/T on the video – And he may agree with a repeal of the law, and I can understand a number of the reasons. I suspect the actual cost is in fact MUCH higher because of welfare fraud, as well as compliance which requires automation, added employment, and often extra facilities.
However, in my life, I have watched a change in the road side debris that happened IMMEDIATELY following the passage of the law in the beginning. I was delivering the Lansing State Journal, the Free Press as a paperboy in the late 70s and spent much time biking the side roads and streets. When the law was passed, no more were bottles tossed, and those which were found a home in the bags which once carried newsprint door to door. This resulted in less trash overall, and the areas I was in began to simply look a little nicer.
And now, would it be too much to expand the law to plastic water bottles as they become the new ‘tossable’ we might find littering our roadways? Or should we throw up our hands and give up trying to encourage less piggishness?
The legislature may pass this on to the governor’s desk, where he probably would not sign it.
Your thoughts?
(9)Nuh Uh.
(0)
Bottle return adds a lot more to the cost of the product. In states like NV which does not have a bottle law, a 2 Liter goes for about $.79, but here, the cheapest is $.99, plus the deposit or $1.09. It's been found that plastic ain't so good. Leaving a plastic bottle of water in a hot car turns it toxic.
You can't minimize plastic in order to return it for the deposit back, won't spin in the machine. Cans and glass bottles, are possibly safer for our health. So maybe we should get rid of plastic all together.
I don't need a ten cent fine to remind me to throw my garbage away. That stupid deposit (double of everyone else's) is a prime example of what is wrong about Michigan. The other states I have lived in had no deposit and things were just fine.
I used to see large groups of people along the highways around Detroit wearing orange vest picking up trash along the shoulders of the road.
Given the propensity of local law enforcement to make themselves "visible" around the end of each calendar month (I cannot imagine why this is?), I don't see any reason why they cannot make themselves a little more useful and cite people for throwing their trash along the roadway?
With 1080I dash cams and body cams, guilt or innocence is much more easier to prove (no more "he said, she said"), and far preferable to making people lug shopping carts full of sticky and filthy empty bottles and cans into grocery stores.
There are the very same grocery carts that are promptly used again (w/o any cleaning or sanitizing) by unsuspecting shoppers to place their groceries into after people are finished returning their bottles and cans.
The solution is a no-brainer to me.
It's only a buck twenty-five each and every year? Good one J-man! Why hell, with that logic- it's only $16,600 so, let's go for shiny happy people broke.
https://www.statedatalab.org/state_data_and_comparisons/detail/michigan
Nanny-state is costly, yes?
Something no one seems to have mentioned... the deposit was set at 10 cents in the late '70's. After 40 years of inflation... it's still 10 cents. Forget plastic -- should the deposit itself be increased?
Uh, No!