Bottle bill stalls on payback

Starting tomorrow businesses can begin charging a nickel deposit on beverage bottles and cans. The only problem is that consumers won’t be able to get that nickle back until Jan. 1. Merchants are saying there are too many unresolved problems surrounding Hawai‘i’s “bottle bill” and consumers are just plain confused about it all.

Right now, there are few plans in place on Kaua‘i where merchants can deliver the returned bottles and cans. And not all containers have the deposit labels that will be required to get money back.

Yet even with the potential difficulties looming ahead, state Health Department officials considered, but then rejected, delaying the start of the deposit charge until mid-November.

Some are saying that the new law is a “regressive” tax by levying it on the customer. The bottle bill was passed in 2002.

Senator Fred Hemmings, R- 25th (Kailua, Waimanalo) said the bill should be delayed and revisited in the next session. The Sierra Club of Hawai‘i, however, says the bill cuts down on littering, improves the environment and reduces Hawaii’s dependency on landfills. But they are also saying that the state is dragging its feet on exactly how the bill should be implemented – all as a tactic to drive the bill back into the Legislature where it could be amended and weakened.

Beginning in 2002, distributors could charge a half-cent container fee to consumers to help set up the program.

And that fee doubled to a penny- a-piece container fee on Oct. 1, all appearing on consumers’ receipts as the “HI beverage fee.” The nickel will show up as “HI beverage deposit.”

Some 800 million beverage containers are sold each year statewide – 67 million containers a month.

It’s estimated that about 70 percent of containers will end up being recycled because of the deposits.

Meanwhile, bottlers have until Jan. 1 to change all their labels even though they can charge the deposit Monday.