WolfeNotes.com

Watch your step…

jsta – could you clarify that?
Would you be refering to steps in a Product Lifecycle Assessment?
Or perhaps the steps in a risk assessment?

The best two reasons against a bottle bill:
There are no visible bottles littering that beautiful view, thus no reason for the bill.
There is a successful NJ Business likely to be bankrupted or made uncompetitive by a bottle bill.
Bill, If you want people to recycle bottles, make it easier to recycle. Many towns have such complicated recycling-refuse rules that they are nearly impossible to comply with, so they just through it out in the trash.
Now we have to add our mercury-filled florescent bulbs to the trash too. One step forward, two steps back.

Betternj – I said nothing about recycling and litter was not mentioned on lines 22-23. Please pay attention to text!.
When I was a kid, we had glass milk bottles delivered to our door.
We also had plenty of local well paid US manufacturing jobs.
With respect to mercury, maybe you should consider the level of mercury in fish caught by the gentleman fishing in hte picture I just posted.

Personally, I will just stop buying things in bottles. Don’t buy much bottled stuff anyway, and what is I recycle.

You can bet that the Huttles won’t be hauling their bottles back and forth, rich lawyers that they are. But they’re all too willing to burden working people with this nonsense.

Another burden for the NJ taxpayer.

JerseyOpine – please opine about what kind of world you’d like to live in.
Private caves in Idaho, perhaps?
This ant-tax drum beat get old.
Taxes are the due we pay to live in society.
Got a better plan?

Hmmm… perhaps with continued energy wasted by NOT recycling, and an increase in global warming, the Salem River at this location will be “undersea” and no longer a river, but part of the new ocean floor?
You can send the really huge prize directly to my home.

How does opposition to a bottle deposit tax translate to living in a private cave in Idaho?
For the record, I am a scrupulous recycler.
I already pay a recycling tax to the county. I do not have a problem with that, I understand that is how the recycling program is funded. Additionally I pay a Recycling tax to my garbage service courtesy of Gov. Corzine (enacted on 01.13.08).
So no, I do not need a third tax for recycling, which I already do very conscientiously.

DING DING DING DING!!!! byramaniac WINS THE PRIZE !!!!!
Yes – glass manufacture consumer huge amounts of energy which is produced by carbon based fossil fuels. Product Lifecycle Assessment shows that – by far – the majority of impacts from glass containers is not disposal or litter, but energy consumption.
The CO2 emitted when producing this energy contributes to global warming.
Global warming is driving – among other things – sea level rise.
This location is just a few feet about sea level and will be inundated!!!,
The Best solution is “source reduction” – to reduce consumption of glass.
The next best option is “reuse” (a form of recycling we do not now employ in NJ, where recycled glass is all crushed and containers are not reused).
Sharply rising oil prices will drive a shift away from petroleum based plastic containers and long range transportation intensive product manufacturing and distribution systems. We may go back to a locally produced and consumed glass based container system.
We better start thinking about and planning for these issues NOW – the crunch is coming – a twofer: global warming and peak oil.

JerseyOpine – a bottle bill can not be dismissed as you did by your comment “Another burden for the NJ taxpayer”
I am glad you support recycling.
We need to move towards the system in Germany – where producers bear more of the burden to pay for and implement a system that focuses further upstream on manufacturing for more efficient use of materials and energy.
Bottle bills can help in that kind of transition.
NJ started heading in this direction in 1990 under new “Source reduction” policy, but that was derained by the Whitman administration due to oppostion by the business community.
DEP has been clueless ever since.

Thye “bottle bill” by itself is onerous. It must be coupled with manufacturers standardizing on a very limited and recyclable family of plastics for their containers.
Right now only two or three types of plastic are accepted for recycling (HDPE, LDPE and PETE). And that varies depending on where you are in the state/country. A lot of plastic still goes to the landfill and with land becoming more and more expensive, recylying will be the better financial deal. Polystyrene is not recycled and yet it’s the material used for foam board insulation.
Glass is a no-brainer. Besides being easy to re-melt into new containers, it works well as an additive to construction materials. Plastics are a petroleum based product, and we all know where that comes from. It take far less energy to re-shape it into other products than it does to formulate the raw material. Same for metal cans.
When recycling first came about years ago, the doom and gloomers hollered about the death of business. The opposite occurred. The idea of recyclng spread into other materials (concrete, asphalt, steel) and businesses actually were born and reduced their operating costs.
Recycling is a culture shift and does not match our ‘merican, party-on-and-toss-it-overboard attitude. We have a choice of accepting this change under our control, or having it shoved down our throats by a changing world.

eyesofsussex – words of wisdom, indeed!

A little off subject but also somewhat relevant… We can’t drink the tap water at home due to a nasty smell and taste so we were doing the bottle (plastic) water thing. Each week the recycling can was filled to the top with these empty plastic water bottles. Several months ago we invested in a water filter that makes the tap water taste pure and clean with no smell. Now the recycling can goes out every two weeks and it still isn’t filled to the top. Also, I no longer need to make a trip to the store to buy the cases of water bottles. A water filter is something all the bottle water drinkers should think about.
I like to see how little trash we can make in a week. I get very happy when I’ve got only one can out front on trash night. It’s the little things…

But one of the biggest problems is the “fast-food” industry. Notice how much waste just one trip through the drive-through produces? And, apparently, Americans need to be told that this food is making them fat too. I guess they thought a trip to McD’s counted as a family dinner.