Retailers can now charge five cents more per container

LIHU‘E — If you bought a case of soda yesterday at the Waipouli Safeway, you probably noticed that it cost a bit more — specifically, $1.20 more.

That’s because another portion of the state’s bottle bill kicked in yesterday, allowing local businesses to charge a nickel deposit on every properly labeled beverage bottle and can.

For some, the additional charge comes at a bad time, when sales on beverages like soda and beer typically peak over the holiday season.

“To me it feels like a tax, like a gas tax,” said Big Save Lihu‘e shopper Koge Saronitman.

For Saronitman, who already recycles at his place of residence, the fee doesn’t hurt too much. He figures it’ll hurt others more. But mostly he’s wondering where all the money collected will go.

“I don’t really need the money,” he said. “But what are they going to spend it on?”

State Department of Health officials said that any uncollected redemptions from the estimated $26 million collected each year in bottle-bill fees will pay for the state’s recycling program.

Meanwhile, the promise of a refund does little to encourage one Big Save shopper to make a trip to a local refund station.

“I’d just go ahead and give the cans and bottles away to someone else to deal with,” said the shopper, who preferred to remain anonymous.

The deposit fee comes in addition to a nonrefundable, one-cent, beverage-container fee that started Oct. 1, 2004. Beginning in 2002, distributors could charge a half-cent container fee to help set up the program, and that fee doubled to a penny-a-piece on Oct. 1, all appearing on consumers’ receipts as the “HI beverage fee.” The bottle-bill deposit appears on receipts as “HI beverage deposit.”

Safeway employees started charging the deposit yesterday because they had properly labeled inventory. Only cans or bottles with the “Hawaii 5¢” or “HI 5¢” label can be sold at the marked-up price. Any fees levied on buyers of bottles or cans without the official labels are illegal, according to DOH officials.

The good news is that those labeled cans and bottles are refundable. The bad news is that they aren’t refundable until Jan. 1, 2005, when the refund part of the program kicks in. It’s also the final date for all Hawai‘i retailers to comply with the “bottle-bill” label requirement.

Meanwhile, prices on some soda machines around Kaua‘i have gone up with little or no explanation, and some are assuming that it’s because of the bottle bill.

But officials with the DOH’s Hawaii Deposit Beverage Container Program say that if you aren’t being explicitly charged for a bottle-bill deposit, it’s not illegal, and there’s nothing they can do.

“It’s just a hike in prices, and that’s not illegal,” said Genevieve Salmonson with the DOH.

For big stores like Safeway, getting properly labeled stock into their inventory here was a bit easier than, say, the much-smaller Menehune Food Mart or Big Save stores.

Consumers can expect all stores to implement the nickel charge as soon as they get their properly labeled stock.

Menehune Food Mart employees, for example, will be charging the extra nickel as soon as the charge is programmed into their computer systems. In the meantime, they are already receiving properly labeled stock.

Foodland spokeswoman Sheryl Toda said that employees at Kaua‘i’s two Foodland stores will implement the charge soon. As of yesterday, Kaua‘i’s Foodland stores had not implemented the nickel charge.

But leaders at corporate headquarters for Foodland Super Market, which runs 29 Foodland and Sack ‘N Save Foods stores statewide, began last month posting signs and handing out fliers explaining the law. Toda said last week that Foodland leaders would be complying with the new law, even though they didn’t like the idea of imposing additional costs on consumers.

Employees at Big Save in Lihu‘e weren’t sure when they would be charging the nickel deposits. According to a spokesperson there, Big Save had not received any comments or questions about the bottle-bill charge.

When Jan. 1, 2005, rolls around, state law requires stores that sell the properly labeled beverages to put up signs identifying the nearest redemption center where consumers can get their money back. Redemption centers must be within two miles of high-density population areas, and state DOH officials will work with leaders of counties and recyclers to set up those centers across the state.

Hawai‘i merchants had argued that there were too many unresolved problems surrounding Hawai‘i’s “bottle bill.” Some are saying that the new law is a “regressive” tax because it costs the customer more. The bottle bill was passed by the state Legislature in 2002.

Department of Health officials considered, but then rejected, delaying the start of the deposit charge until mid-November.

State Sen. Fred Hemmings, R-Kailua-Waimanalo, said implementation of the bill should have been delayed and revisited in the next legislative session. Leaders of the Sierra Club of Hawaii, however, argued that the bill cuts down on littering, improves the environment, and reduces Hawai‘i’s dependency on landfills. But they also said that state leaders were dragging their feet on exactly how the bill should be implemented — all as a tactic to drive the bill back into the state Legislature where it could be amended and weakened.

About 800 million beverage containers are sold each year statewide, or 67 million containers a month.

State officials estimate that about 70 percent of containers will end up being recycled because of the deposits, but opponents of the bill argued that the bill would only affect about 2 percent of the wastestream.

For more information, please call the DOH, toll-free at 274-3141, then 6-4226# after the recorded message.

On the Net: State Department of Health: www.hawaii.gov/health

Sierra Club: mailto:www.bottlebillhawaii.org

Phil Hayworth, business editor, may be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 251) or mailto:phayworth@pulitzer.net.