Conference noted::bicycle

    I don't like the "Bottle Bill", and I don't litter!!

    Just who will pay the 100,000 people in there new "jobs"?
    	the people who litter, AND ME
    
    ENFORCE the No Litter laws and FINE THE S&#T out of them, then
    the people who litter will pay the NEW litter police(100,000 of
    them), AND do 100hrs of litter pick-up + street sweeping time to the 
    town/city that they crapped on!
    
    That way THEY pay the bucks not me!
    
    note:people who ride race bikes are not the ones who litter, A$$ho%es
    	 who drive pick-ups and drink beer DO
    
    hey thats it, tax pick-ups 1k per year for all the crap that blows
    out of there trucks!
    

    John_who_is_sick_of_paying_for_other_peoples_sh&t_and_who_does_not_like_
    	drunks_in_pick-ups!
    

    .0 seems very sensible to me. Making economic use of resources is going
    to become a more and more widespread concept in the 90s as we begin to
    realise how much the environment is damaged by wasteful consumption.
    Something like this Bottle Bill would result in a real improvement in
    the environment, and that strikes me as worth paying for. Besides, a
    state or country that gets into recycling will develop expertise that
    other states or countries will eventually want to buy.
    
    
    Rod

I have no *real* opinion on the Bottle Bill. I live in Taxachusetts were they
have the bill in effect. I really can't see the difference in the amount of
glass on the road. The people that threw bottles out the window will not stop
doing it for 5�. The flip side is, some of this trash that landed on the grass
will get recycled by people that will take advantage of the deposit.

I'd like to see a bill to make town sweep their streets more than once a year,
that'll take care of the glass problem ;-)

Tom

    re: .1
    
    The litter is only a small part of the idea behind the "Bottle Bill".
    There is a serious problem with solid waste in this country. In a lot
    of cases people are to lazy to recycle; The "Bottle Bill" puts a 
    financial incentive on recycling. 
    
    As the base note pointed out the amount of litter in states with bottle
    bills has gone down. This ends up saving you money in taxes. You're not 
    paying for the clean-up of litter on the street and you're not paying
    for the disposal of solid waste in dumps. As a cyclists you happen to 
    benefit more than most from "Bottle Bills". If the legislation reduces 
    the amount of glass on the streets you'll save the cost of tires,
    tubes, and repairs.
    
    Paul
    

    RE:.1 (mostly)  I hate to over generalize and stereotype folks but
    there are SOME people who ride race bikes who leave their flat tubulars
    behind instead of finding a place to dispose of them properly, pitch
    trash and/or banana peels anywhere convenient and otherwise behave like
    morons.
    
    ed

re: .1

I drive a pickup.

I drink beer.

I do my part to keep the streets clean because people use my truck as a
dumpster.  But hey, I figure it's only a bottle that would have otherwise 
been busted on the shoulder (waiting for me to come by on my other 
vehicle).  

I think the argument presented in .1 doesn't hold water.  It may be right 
in thoery but the fact is, it just doesn't work that way.  It's too bad 
people like us who don't litter need to be burdened with a bill written for 
the other guy, but get used to it; today it's a bottle bill, tomorrow it's 
going to be a paper, glass, aluminum, steel, plastic, .....bill.  Take it 
or take your garbage and keep it.

Craig

ps.  I live in Taxachusetts and I think there are less bottles and cans on
the side of road since the bottle bill.

    I don't buy Veryfine because of their glass packaging.  BTW they
    would still be exempt from the proposed bill.  _KB

>
>    I don't buy Veryfine because of their glass packaging.  BTW they
>    would still be exempt from the proposed bill.  _KB
>
	Sorry, I don't quite understand the logic.  If I'm not
	mistaken, glass is the most easily recycled of all the
	containers that juice might come in.  I buy VeryFine by
	the case from the factory and all the empties get
	recycled.  I don't see why you should boycott them
	because some other bozo might throw one of their bottles
	on the side of the road.  Come to think of it, what do
	you drink?  Almost every beverage I can think of, except
	milk, can be had in glass.

	I agree that juice bottles should be included in any	
	bottle bill.

	chris

    Hiya Rod!
    
    I fully agree with your note and go one step further and argue that
    across the board recycling should be made mandatory in the US.  While
    policies like the bottle bill certainly are beneficial to us cyclists,
    other policies, like paper, glass, and metal recycling are also
    beneficial in that they guarantee an environment free of eyesores and
    contamination.  In my view, the next logical step in recycling is to
    ban the disposable diaper (irregardless of whether it is
    chamois/synthetic or not).
    
    Alfonso

    re .8:  I agree glass is an ideal beverage packaging medium *IF* people
    return them.  Veryfine bottles do not have the 5 cent deposit, and
    hence are all over the place.  After commuting to Littleton for several
    years, I became fed up with the smashed Veryfine bottles on the sides
    of the roads within the first few miles of their factory outlet store.
    I drink and return 2 liter plastic soda bottles.  Have yet to get my
    first flat from them.  In the meantime, until Veryfine changes their
    packaging or lose their deposit-exempt status (which they cried over so
    loudly and got in '83's Mass. bottle bill), I ain't buying their product.
    _KB

At the risk of being pelted by returnable bottles..

I lived through Michigan's bottle bill and the substantial increase
in the price of canned and bottled drinks.  Gone were the cheap sodas for
12� a can.  Drinks from a machine went from .35 to 50 in a matter of months,
and that was directly due to the bottle bill.

I will admit the roads were cleaner, and the number of cans/bottles decreased.

Michigan eventually changed their law, and Mass. could afford to do the same.
They required all retailers to take back ALL bottles and cans, regardless of
whether they sold them or not.  It seems that Mass. retailers take pride in
telling you, "Oh, we don't carry that brand (hmmph)."  Of course, since
beer and pop (er, soda) could all be sold anywhere, you didn't have to
find a package store to return those bottles.  Which leads to my next point..

How many of you have made an out-the-way trip to the package store to return
20 bottles ($1.00), and spent 60� in gasoline (and pollution) doing it?  Or
do you ride your bike to the store :-).

Just a little fodder for the conversation.....  The issue is not as 
cut-and-dried as it might seem at first.


Steve

� How many of you have made an out-the-way trip to the package store to return
� 20 bottles ($1.00), and spent 60� in gasoline (and pollution) doing it?  Or
� do you ride your bike to the store :-).

    Noone with any common sense is going to do that - they'll bring the
    returnables back when buying more soda, or whatever.

    - Jim

    Fact is - the price of any given beverage will go up after
    implementation of a bottle bill, but from an environmental standpoint
    this is a small price to pay. In the long run, I believe that we will
    all save $$. Waste disopsal cost will only go up and landfills will
    only be harder to come by as time goes by. Towns, cities, states
    (citizens, planners) that have the foresite to look ahead will be
    better positioned to deal with the mounting solid waste disopsal
    problems, and bottle bills are one of the most effective ways to
    begin to deal with this very real problem. In Maine we have recently
    passed legislation that will include virtually any beverage container
    except dairy product, in a bottle bill. Also plastic six-pack yokes
    have been outlawed as have those handy-dandy little juice boxes with
    the little straws (because they are made from several different
    materials and aren't recyclable). But anyway, getting back to the
    point in the base note, I'm glad that Maine has passed the nations'
    most aggressive bottle bill because around where I live and ride my
    bike about the only glass that I encounter in the road is that from
    juice and liquor bottles. I'm sure that I will see less if any of that
    kind of stuff in the future. And by the same token, I'm sure that in
    other states (or nationally) that pass some kind of bottle bill, one
    could expect to see far less glass/cans in the road..............paul

    How much the price goes up is a little misleading on the bottlers
    part.  I saw an article on the New York law two years after going
    into effect and it said that the percentage of bottles not returned
    were running about four times the expected and bottlers were making
    a profit from it.  Not only that but they were making a significant
    profit even if 100% were returned because the set-up costs were not as
    high as claimed.

For those of you who feel that all containers should be recycled:

    There is  a  petetion  drive  to get a proposed law onto the Mass.
    ballot  which would require that all packaging materials be either
    recycled  or  recyclable (with all the usual exemptions). For more
    information, drop by the Stow recycling area (newspapers and clear
    glass only) any Saturday between 10 and 1.

--David