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McLaughlin argues that the nickel should be
a darn sight more. A nickel in 1975 would be
worth 21 cents in today’s money, but the drop
in incentive goes beyond the nickel’s value. During
the 70s, vending machines dispensed cans
of soda for about 40 cents each. At that price
the deposit – taking the total cost of the 12 oz beverage
to 45 cents – would account for about
11 percent of the total purchase price. Today,
20oz bottles can sell for $2 or more, and the
still-unchanged deposit accounts for about 2.5
percent of that total. That leaves busy consumers
with a vanishingly small incentive to hold on
to their empty containers, and that diminishing
incentive stretches up the supply chain.
Every nickel paid to a consumer for returning
an empty container makes a round trip –
at least on paper. Consumers hand the store a
nickel when they buy the still-sealed beverage.
The store, in return, passes that nickel to the distributor.
Then the consumer returns the empty
container. The store returns the deposit, and the
distributor reimburses the store – adding a small
handing fee for the store’s time and trouble in
dealing with the empty container. But the key
word here is small. The laws dictate that stores
be paid a handling fee of 1-3 cents per container,
which has remained static just as long as the
nickel deposit has.
“It’s hard to find someone that hasn’t had a
raise in 30 years,” McLaughlin said. That low
handling fee has also made it difficult for standalone
redemption centers to stay in business.
In New York, the climate for redemption centers
could improve if legislators there pass a bill
currently active in the General Assembly. The
bill would increase the state’s handling fee from
2 cents per container to 3.5 cents per container,
and expand the state’s bottle bill to cover a
broader range of beverages. That last part makes
Jim Calvin nervous.
Calvin, the president of the New York Association
of Convenience Stores, said store operators
already struggle under the burden of returned
beer and soda containers. Their stores are already
packed tight, Calvin said, and they don’t
need –or want –to handle empty sports drink,
juice and bottled water containers.
Store operators have few options, Calvin said,
and most can’t afford machines to accept and
process containers for them. Even if they could,
he said, the noise generated by reverse vending
machines make them a prohibitive nuisance in a
3,000 square foot store.
That leaves clerks to handle each return by
hand, Calvin said, creating delays in a venue
where consumers demand rapid service.
It also leaves store operators with the
problem of stashing full-sized empty
containers at a time when they are trying
to increase their fresh food offerings.
Calvin said separating empty containers
from fresh food – both physically and
mentally – poses a problem. Stacks of
stinky, moldy, bottles and cans don’t exactly
fit with the “fresh” image, he said.
“A handling fee of any amount would
not eliminate the problem of insufficient storage space or the problem of
compromised sanitation,” Calvin said.
“It’s a nuisance that convenience store
operators deal with because they’re obligated
to deal with it under the law.”
Calvin said that he’s been happy that
convenience stores and their beverage
industry allies have been able to defeat
the New York proposal in the last
four years. He feels like bottle-bill supporters
are trying to shove the burden of dealing with
returned containers onto retailers. He said he
would rather see the state establish a network of
redemption centers before expanding the law.
He did not, however, have any idea how the
state could do that.
McLaughlin called Calvin’s idea impractical. Investors,
she said, couldn’t be expected to open a
business that would be dependent on not-yet passed
legislation, but she said she sympathized
with convenience store owners. To a point.
“You can make the decision to sell it or not sell
it,” McLaughlin said, and if stores decide to sell
beverages –as most do – “they have to accept the
responsibility for taking the stuff back.”