On the back of every plastic and glass bottle, there is a place of text that says something like “5 cent refund for NY, MA, VT, CT” and so on. This is a list of states that will give you money for your plastic. This means if you were to keep all of your bottles and take them to a redemption center, you would receive money. Normally the amount of money for each bottle is 5 or 10 cents.
A bottle bill works because of the cash incentive to recycle. A bottle bill is just another step toward a clean environment, and getting people to recycle. Nearly 40-60 percent of all litter is drink containers that could be recycled, according to bottlebill.org.
But as you probably could have guessed, out of the 10 states that do this, our great state of North Carolina is not one of them. So surprising. I’m guessing Pat McCrory and the N.C. General Assembly are too busy oppressing voters, preventing abortion and trying to break the separation of church and state to care about a bottle bill.
To learn more about what you can do to pass a bottle bill in our state, visit bottlebill.org.
Benjamin Fleagle
Asheville
