Haste Makes Waste

The Poughkeepsie Journal is reporting this morning (via Liz) that there is a good chance that the June 1st implementation date for the expanded bottle bill will be delayed-as we have been lobbying for: "State leaders indicated Wednesday they may need to delay the expansion of the state's bottle-deposit law over concerns from bottlers that companies won't be able to implement the program by the June 1 deadline. The protest from bottlers and breweries is centered on a new state law that would require all recyclable bottles to carry a New York-specific bar code. Bottlers say there is simply no way all the bottles in New York could be changed by the deadline."

Nor has anyone bothered to do even a cursory due diligence over the cost that the proposal will have for the state's small bottlers and distributors; which is why delay is a good thing, because it will allow for the creation of a more rational review process for a number of the proposed changes that were snuck into the expanded container deposit law.

The NY only UPC code at least has gotten the attention of state leaders: "Legislative leaders and Gov. David Paterson acknowledged Wednesday they will need to revisit the bar-code issue, saying they may need to add an amendment to the law to push out the start date. "We don't want to do anything to hurt the industry while we are trying to clean up the environment," Paterson said."

But no one has even bothered to examine just how many of the water companies-just added to the deposit stream-will collect their empty containers. Most don't have a route delivery system, but instead rely on food warehouses to deliver their products. Back hauling garbage on food delivery vehicles, aside from being impractical, is against the law.

So it appears that delay will be inevitable. What else gets changed during the dely process remains to be seen; but we will be marshaling our forces to inform the legislature how important it is to insure that the smallest players in the beverage production and distribution process be protected from the costlier provisions of the expanded law.