Today, Governor Markell and DNREC Secretary Colin O’Mara unveiled their plan to implement a statewide recycling plan that will change the way that Delawareans dispose of recyclable materials.
Recycling would remain voluntary for homes and businesses under the plan, but curbside services and special containers would be universally available. Commercial haulers and municipal governments that collect trash would be required to provide curbside pickups.
Money to help haulers and communities start new recycling programs would come from a non-refundable 5-cent fee now charged as a returnable deposit for smaller glass and plastic beverage containers. Fee proceeds also would pay for marketing and education.
The beauty here is the way that the bottle bill is fixed. We will go away from the 5 cent refundable deposit (for which there are no reliable numbers about actual refunds issued) and instead works to lower the deposit to 2 cents non-refundable. That 2 cents would go to fund the statewide recycling effort.
The effort will remove the logistics of collecting deposits, accepting returns, paying out refunds and transporting the empty’s and accounting for the tens of thousands of nickels in the process. Let’s face it, it sucks trying to get refunds on these deposits. Retailers regularly place restrictions on the quantity, packaging and state of returns. I don’t blame them, the bottles are unweildy in large quantities. As a consumer, I would much rather just toss them in a recycling bin for pickup every other week.
I started doing curbside recycling about a year ago, when my regular waste company started offering it. The ease of single stream recycling makes my recycling bin fill faster than my trash. It is oddly comforting when I take the large can to the curb with only two small kitchen trash bags full of trash. Hopefully we can improve even further, and this plan seems to move in that direction.