Press Statement
The Mass Food Association's Bottle Bill "Repeal" Proposal, which would add a one-cent tax to all beverages, isn't an attempt to "clean up" litter or increase recycling, it's an effort to maximize the profits of bottlers and supermarkets at public expense. This one-cent fee would barely fund enough recycling containers for a small city, and would do nothing to fund cleanup efforts. Their proposal is also a job killer, resulting in the loss of over 1000 existing recycling jobs. It would replace our successful deposit system, which has an amazing 80% recycling rate, with a voluntary system that sadly gets only 22% of the empties. Litter would increase, costing our cities and towns millions in cleanup fees. It would increase our dependence on foreign oil, the source of the plastic.
The existing bottle bill is the perfect example of corporate responsibility: those who create the problem, manufacturing billions of beverages annually in Massachusetts alone, pay to help clean up the mess that's created. Their repeal proposal is corporate irresponsibility at its worst.
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