More than half of Rhode Islanders support a bottle bill to create a recycling deposit program, according to survey results shared Friday by Save the Bay.
The 10-page report is based on a poll of 400 registered Rhode Island voters conducted by research firm The Mellman Group in February via phone and text. Surveyors asked participants if they would support a 10-cent deposit on all beverages in recyclable containers. About 55% supported the measure, 36% did not, and 9% weren’t sure.
After survey takers heard arguments both for and against the legislation, favorable responses rose to 58% and unfavorable responses fell to 31%.
“These poll results show that Rhode Islanders support the adoption of a bottle bill and that they’re likely to return their empty containers once a system is in place,” said Jed Thorp, Save the Bay’s director of advocacy, in a statement.
A bottle bill lets states levy an additional surcharge on certain drink purchases, usually between five and 10 cents per bottle or can, that is then returned to the consumer if they return the empties to a curbside or standalone recycling center. Overall, 10 states have bottle bills, each of which does things a little differently in regards to refunds, availability of recycling locations and beverages covered by the law. Only beer, soda and seltzer qualify for the rebate in Massachusetts, while in Maine everything but dairy and cider are subject to the bottle fee.
A bottle bill has not yet been introduced in the State House this year, but an 18-member special commission has been studying how to reduce plastic bottle waste since 2023. Its co-chair, Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee, a South Kingstown Democrat, did not see her bottle bill pass last year. The beverage and retail industry denounced it despite McEntee, who also chairs the Rhode Island House Committee on Small Business, designing the proposed law to be as permissible as possible.
Legislative study commission report to be released
The Plastic Waste Commission meets on Monday and is expected to share the fruit of its nearly two-year investigation: A final report that will have recommendations for how to best proceed with a bottle bill. The report was supposed to have been completed last June, but was not finished in time, said House spokesman Larry Berman.
The first state to authorize a bottle refund program was Oregon, in 1971, and the most recent state to pass a bottle bill was Hawaii, in 2002. Only one state, Delaware, has ever enacted and then repealed a bottle bill. The statute for a five-cent refundable deposit had been in place for 28 years before it was nullified in 2010, and then replaced with a four-cent, nonrefundable fee that’s then fed into state recycling costs.
Massachusetts residents have been able to collect refunds when recycling empty soda and beer cans since 1982, and Connecticut enacted its bottle bill even earlier, in 1978. The two states also had the lowest recycling rates of programs nationwide in 2023, according to stats from the Container Recycling Institute, with Massachusetts at 36% and Connecticut at 43%. Massachusetts also had the lowest percentage, 41%, of beverages covered by the deposit.
The trendsetting Oregon program had an 87% recycling rate, the highest nationwide. Most states with bottle redemption programs had over 60% recycling rates in 2023.
“The problems of beverage container litter and plastic pollution are only getting worse,” said McEntee in a statement released with Save the Bay’s survey results. “Based on what we’ve heard during the study commission, I believe we can come up with a bottle bill system that will help our environment while not being a burden to businesses or consumers.”
The survey found that environmental worries were a major driver of the desire for a bottle bill, with 85% of respondents concerned about shoreline litter. The state landfill nearing capacity was a concern for 73% of respondents. Another 71% of respondents believed Rhode Island’s recycling system is “not working.”
“Rhode Islanders are tired of seeing single-use beverage containers littering our streets and our shoreline,” Thorp said in a statement.
Last year, volunteers working with Save the Bay on coastal cleanup efforts picked up 114,914 pieces of trash, of which 25,276 pieces were disposable drink containers.
That may be unsurprising, given the Ocean State’s not-so-ocean-friendly amount of litter: Stroll down most sidewalks in Rhode Island and you’re bound to find some empty bottles, soda cans, or nips, like the ubiquitous empties of the cinnamon-flavored alcohol Fireball. And only about a third of the recyclable bottles and cans are actually recycled in the state, according to 2023 data from the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, the quasi-public agency that runs the state landfill in Johnston.
The availability of dedicated return centers affected respondents’ willingness to use the program: 57% said they would probably participate, compared to 52% who would if there were no return centers. People who didn’t think they would participate comprised 38% of respondents with redemption centers in place, but 47% said they were not likely to use the program if no dedicated return centers existed.
The research group also broke down the responses into demographics including educational attainment, gender, age, location and political affiliation. Democrats and unaffiliated voters largely affirmed a redemption program, with 64% of 60% respectively, in support. The lowest rate of support came from registered Republicans, of whom only 38% supported the bottle bill after hearing both sides of the argument. But GOP voters were also swayed: Only 25% of Republicans said they supported the bill before hearing the arguments.
There was also a gender gap in support: After hearing both sides, 69% of women supported a bottle bill, while only 47% of men did
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
