Among the bills advocates are hoping to move in these closing weeks of the legislative session is policy dealing with expanding bottle redemption and recycling in New York: The Bigger Better Bottle Bill, as it’s known. 

Blair Horner, NYPIRG’s senior policy advisor, is a driving force behind the effort to score what he described as a long overdue update to New York’s redemption system. 

“The bill needs to be modernized for the fundamental reason that it’s out of date,” he said. 

But why is it bigger? Horner said it expands the types of containers that are included after years of stagnancy, as the industry has expanded its offerings. 

“There’s a lot of other containers that aren’t covered under law, sports drinks, iced teas,” he said. 

What about better? He said it’s that expansion of items along with the fact that the bill would bump the deposit amount from five cents per container to 10. 

“It’s been a nickel since 1982, pre-internet for those of you who are keeping score,” he said. 

Advocates are banking on that extra change being an incentive for more people to bring their containers in. A plus, they argue for struggling redemption centers because it would also incrementally increase the handling fee for the first time in 15 years, and a boon for the state’s bottom line by increasing what New York can bring in through its cut of unclaimed funds. 

“Other states that have gone to a dime have seen their redemption rates go up dramatically,” he said. 

NYPIRG has argued that states with higher deposit fees have higher redemption rates than those who have a five-cent fee, citing Michigan where they say a 10-cent deposit fee has helped net an 89% reception rate prior to the pandemic and Vermont where a 15-cent fee on liquor bottles resulted in an 83% rate in 2020. 

State Sen. Rachel May carries the bill, and said another key objective is that if more people do return their containers, it will help keep materials that could be recycled out of landfills. May is a player in a battle to keep places like the massive 300-foot-tall Seneca Meadows, which is near her district, from expanding further. 

“The people of the Finger Lakes don’t want to be known as the trash capital of the world and I want to help them not have to be that,” she said. 

NYPIRG has pointed to the DEC’s objective of moving New York toward a “circular economy” as landfills reach their capacity, and pointed out that the bill would play a key role in that effort. 

Republican Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay acknowledged those potential positives, but said he’s concerned that lawmakers are making things harder on businesses and customers in the short term while driving up the amount of unclaimed funds the state can cash in on. 

“If we increase that amount, obviously the state is going to take more of that money, so what’s the motivation, is it actually to get bottles back into recycling or is it for the state to get more revenue?" he said. 

Ken Pokalsky, vice president of The Business Council of New York State, which opposes the bill, argued that as an alternative, redemption centers should be boosted by getting a higher percentage of those unclaimed funds, rather than driving up the upfront cost of beverages. 

“At a time when the governor says affordability should be one of the major concerns you’re adding to the direct out-of-pocket cost of consumers when they go to the grocery store,” he said. “Use a slice of that hundred million dollars or so and keep it in the system to support struggling redemption centers, there is an alternative bill that does just that.” 

They also argue that redemption in general is redundant, given that those other container types can be picked up curbside and the state is already attempting to change that through “expanded producer responsibility,” legislation, and boosting redemption is duplicative.  

“I think government always works least well when it has two programs doing the same thing,” he said. “In a state with mandatory curbside collection, why are we sending some of that waste back to retail stores instead of doing it curbside?” 

“They obviously haven’t done their homework,” Horner shot back. “Two-thirds or so of containers are currently redeemed, the states' recycling programs, on the other hand, don’t work well.”