Cans fly fast and furious at Iowa redemption center
Kans-R-Us in Perry is one of about 100 remaining redemption centers in Iowa. There has been renewed debate about Iowa’s “bottle bill” that in 1978 established 5-cent deposit for cans and bottles.
Michael Zamora and Kyle Munson/The Register
Iowa lawmakers are more determined than ever to overhaul the state’s decades-old bottle and can redemption program — but don’t crack open a celebratory beverage just yet.
Senate lawmakers passed their proposal, Senate File 2378, Tuesday on a 31-18 vote. Every Republican voted yes except Sen. Mark Lofgren, R-Muscatine, who joined Democrats in voting no. It was the first time in years that the issue has been debated by a full chamber of the Legislature.
Lawmakers have been repeatedly stymied when attempting to update the law, which allows Iowans to return empty cans and bottles to grocery stores and other retailers to get back a five-cent deposit that they paid when buying the drink. Some have tried to scrap the program, others have argued for expanding it by saying it encourages people to recycle their containers rather than throwing them away.
House Republicans have their own plan this year — with key differences from the Senate version — and it’s not clear the two chambers will be able to reach an agreement this year with the end of the legislative session potentially just a few weeks away.
Kick the can: Iowa’s bottle bill was falling apart — and then the pandemic made things worse
The House had been scheduled to debate its own bill, House File 2571, Tuesday afternoon, but pulled it from the calendar following the Senate vote.
“We’re letting some negotiations play out before determining our next step,” Rep. Brian Lohse, R-Bondurant, one of the authors of the House bill, said in a statement Tuesday. “We remain hopeful that we will be able to come together and reach an agreement on a good bill for Iowa.”
Last Thursday, Sen. Dan Dawson, R-Council Bluffs, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, said during a taping of “Iowa Press” on Iowa PBS that “I wouldn’t predict this is the year yet.”
“I do think momentum is building towards getting something finally done on that. I don’t know that this is the year or not,” Dawson said of the law. “But I do think that post-pandemic a lot of Iowans are starting to take a look at how we recycle and maybe trying to find a way to refresh the old system.”
Even the bill’s floor manager, Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, acknowledged the legislation had made more progress than in past years.
“I didn’t fully expect to get to this point,” he said.
But Democrats said the Senate’s bill would kill the decades-old law by giving Iowans fewer opportunities to return their bottles and cans.
“Iowans have been loud and clear,” Sen. Bill Dotzler, D-Waterloo, said in a statement. “They have been frustrated with the loss of redemption centers and the refusal of some retailers to accept containers. This bill takes us in the wrong direction and would mean the death of the bottle bill.”
What would the House and Senate bottle bill plans do?
One of lawmakers’ central aims is to prop up Iowa’s redemption centers, which have struggled to make ends meet under the current system. Many centers have gone out of business over the years.
“Our redemption centers are starting to dwindle as the years have gone on there,” Dawson said on Iowa Press. “And if we’re going to have a recycling program, particularly for rural Iowa, there has to be a robust redemption center system out there.”
The House and Senate plans would each give more money to redemption centers than the centers receive under the current law. The House bill would increase the redemption centers’ one-cent handling fee to two cents, while the Senate would increase it to three cents.
The bill’s floor manager in the Senate, Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, said boosting the handling fee to three cents would incentivize businesses to expand.
“I think if you triple the amount of money that goes into a certain sector, whether it’s cotton candy, a gun shop or a luxury car dealership, you’re going to get more of them,” he said. “It happens that way.”
Both the House and Senate bills have would allow retailers like grocery stores and convenience stores to opt-out of taking back empty bottles and cans in some form. The Senate’s version would allow stores to stop accepting containers beginning July 1, 2023.
Current law requires them to accept the empty containers and return the five-cent deposit paid by Iowans when they purchase pop or beer — but some stores have refused to take back the bottles and cans, in defiance of the law.
Lohse, who owns a local grocery store, called it “a food safety issue” for grocery stores to have to accept dirty containers, especially when they serve fresh food.
“I will not get into — in public and online — the things that we have found in the cans and bottles that come into our store,” Lohse said at a committee meeting last week.
Rep. Mary Wolfe, D-Clinton, was one of three Democrats to vote against the House proposal in the Ways and Means Committee last week. She said the bill seems to address grocery stores’ flouting of the requirement that they accept empty containers by doing away with the requirement altogether.
“It seems like we are somewhat rewarding them for getting away with it for so long,” she said.
Republicans like Dawson and Lohse have said they’d like to see mobile redemption centers where Iowans can return containers, scan a code and have money deposited in their accounts. The Senate bill contains language to set up those systems, which would be allowed to return Iowans’ five-cent deposit to them within 10 days rather than immediately.
But Senate Democrats said they don’t believe those programs will end up being accessible for all Iowans.
“Those are expensive and they’re only going to work in areas where you have a high volume of cans,” Dotzler said. “You’re not going to invest in a mobile unit and take it and put it in a rural Iowa area and expect that to be profitable, so I don’t see those as being the answer to this.”
Sen. Tom Shipley, R-Nodaway, said his ears “popped up” when he heard that.
“I’m the smallest market area that you can imagine,” he said, referring to Adams County in southwest Iowa. “In my little county, they’re already looking at this system. They started looking at this system months ago.”
The Senate’s bill would also require proof of identification when someone returns more than 2,000 cans, to ensure people aren’t crossing state lines to obtain the five-cent deposit.
And it would reduce the per-barrel beer excise tax from 5.89 cents to 4.3 cents, which is expected to reduce state revenues by about $4.3 million annually, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency.
Polling shows the bottle bill is popular
A February poll conducted by Selzer & Co. and commissioned by Cleaner Iowa found the bottle bill remains popular in Iowa. Eighty-four percent of Iowa active registered voters said they believe the program has been good for Iowa, while 12% said they believe it has been bad for the state.
The poll found 86% of Iowa voters favor expanding the number of places bottles and cans can be returned and 72% favor increasing the one-cent handling fee for redemption centers and stores.
The poll also found 71% support for expanding the law to cover plastic bottles for water and sports drinks and 51% support for increasing the five-cent deposit to 10 cents. Neither option is being considered in the House and Senate proposals this year.
“Unfortunately, it has been so drained, so exhausted over time without legislative attention that expansion is not an option right now,” Schultz said of the law. “We do not have the infrastructure, we don’t have the redemption centers to handle an additional load.”
The poll also found 62% of voters said all stores that sell containers covered by the law must accept customers returning the containers, compared to 34% who said stores should not have to accept returns if they feel it would affect the food they sell.
Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at [email protected] or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on Twitter at @sgrubermiller.