A quick budgetary fix: Increase the bottle deposit

Under certain Delaware legislation, certain bottles are subject to a bottle deposit. In most cases, this deposit (which effectively operates as a tax) makes one's purchased bottle of soda go from being $.99 to $1.04. Whether this money goes into the state general fund, or in the hands of the store, I am not sure. Whether the bottles actually get recycled when they are returned is also questionable. While I can't find it, I think there's also a deposit for wine or beer now also, but that may also depend on where you buy.

My point is with this 5 cent deposit is that it only represents approximately 5% of the cost of the item, at least if we're talking about soda bottles. Wasn't the bottle deposit either 3 or 5 cents when sodas were half that price, or even a fraction of that price? Let's say for my argument's sake that years ago, the bottle deposit on a 15 cent bottle of soda was 3 cents. So way back when, the bottle deposit was about 20% of the cost of the drink. Given that everything else has increased or at least kept pace with inflation, why not this bottle deposit? Nobody cares about 5 cents. The trick is to figure out the line just below where people will stop caring. I see it probably at 15%, but argue a point why it could be even higher.

If the bottle deposit was 20% or even 25% of the cost today, per bottle, I think a lot more people would be inclined to recycle. And if not, the state could figure out a way to account for the money and the increased bottle deposit would be an easy and straightforward solution to inject a few million into the general budget. Soda sales alone should generate this - if they did the same thing for newspaper, beer bottles and other things DNREC wants everyone to recycle, maybe it would align the financial interests of both the purchasers and the environmentalists. Just a thought.

Tags: increasing the bottle deposit