Maine lawmakers are viewing a pot of $4 million in unclaimed bottle deposits as just ripe to pour into lake and farm conservation.

And that's precisely why we don't like bottle bills – the system where people pay a 5-cent or 10-cent deposit on each beverage bottle. If they return it, they get the deposit back. If they don't they lose their deposit.

There are lots of problems with these, including people will buy a bottle with a deposit-state label in a nondeposit state, then take it into a deposit state and collect that nickle or dime deposit. Or, even worse, they will take a bottle with no deposit and collect a deposit in a deposit state.

Another problem, and the topic of Maine's bill, is what happens to those deposits that were not redeemed by returning the bottle?

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection estimates there are about $16 million a year in unclaimed reductions. That's an attractive target for revenue-hungry legislators who want to do good things without raising taxes.

So the Maine bill would capture those unredeemed deposits to create an ongoing funding source for conserving farmland and maintaining water quality in the state. Most people think those are good objectives., espcially since Maine farmland has been shrinking as farmers age and sell to developers. But major beverage distributors in Maine have testified the system costs far more to operate than the deposits collected.

The Best Solution

The best solution is also the simplest: Go to a curbside recycling system. that eliminates the entire deposit collection-return process entire. It's quick, it's easy and it can be profitable.

A curbside recycling system is even easier for bomeowners than toting used cans, bottles, etc., to a redemption center they are simply put in a container outside one's residence.

The first way government benefits is simple: It costs less to rycle bottles, cans, etc., than it does to haul them to a landfill. The second way is to sell those cans, bottles and other materials to be converted into neew products. I heard several years ago that Montgomery County, Md., where we live makes over $500,000 a year from recycling. To be sure, that's a drop in the bucket of a large county government, but still, it is better than making nothing.

Industry's Best Solution

It's natural for industry to oppose any attempt to divert part of the revenue to anothe purpose. But why? If it really costs more to operate the system than a business earns off the system, why not simply call for the abolishment of the entire bottle-bill-redemption-center operation and replace it with curbside recycling and the sale of recovered materials? Beverage distributors and retailers lose the cost of handling the returns, tax payers benefit by seeing operating costs go down and county revenue go up as recyclables are sold.