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December 20, 2006
Bring it on
Bottle tax would help curb littering
Sometimes when different organizations have “mouthpieces” out representing
their interests, they tend to speak before they think things completely through.
Comments from OMEGA (the West Virginia Oil Marketers and Grocers Association),
when it comes to the issue of a proposed bottle tax in West Virginia, provide a
perfect example of such an effort.
OMEGA says a bottle tax in West Virginia would be ineffective in dealing with
litter, as well as being unfair to stores located on the state’s borders because
consumers would drive out-of-state to purchase beverages to avoid a 10-cent
deposit fee on bottles.
We disagree on both counts.
First, any deposit fee on bottles will go a long way toward cleaning up our
state and helping rid the landscape of trash.
Check with Sherrie Hunter, the Raleigh County Solid Waste Authority director of
education and marketing, and ask her how many bottles have been picked up during
the first two years of Sherrie’s Sweep alone. We promise you, the figure is
staggering.
Put a bottle tax on and you will see fewer bottles littering the scenery for two
reasons. First, people won’t be as eager to just toss it out the window when
it’s worth 10 cents. Second, you can bet the bounty hunters will be out
scavenging for the bottles. The end result is a cleaner environment.
If someone really wanted to be innovative, we could also get those
aforementioned bounty hunters some free trash bags and ask them to fill them up
with litter and drop them off in designated receptacles when they bring the
bottles in for redemption (all right, before you say it, we know that’s probably
asking for trouble. But hey, we’d like to see the litter eradicated).
As for the establishments that do business on our borders, it won’t be any
different from those people who do their grocery shopping in surrounding states
instead of West Virginia. Besides, this isn’t really a tax anyway, it is a
deposit. Bring back the empty and you get your money back. No rocket science
needed to cipher this one.
So OMEGA can spare us all of the fancy talk. We aren’t buying it and neither
should our lawmakers or the public.
Bring it on. The positives have a definite advantage over the negatives.
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