Friday, May 01, 2009

Deposits Bottled?

Crain's Insider (subscription) is reporting that soda bottlers are telling the state that they will not accrue the money expected from the state's absconding with the nickels from unredeemed water bottles: "Bottlers say the state won’t reach its revenue projections from nickel deposits on bottled water because it will take months to add bar codes to bottles. Some predict bottled water sales will slow to a trickle on June 1, when the new law takes effect. An extension is possible."

Not only possible, but very likely-and it now appears that the senate and the assembly staffs are meeting to address the impossibility of having any proper deposit indicia on water bottles by June 1st; at least not with any NY Only labels or UPC codes. Given that, and given the fact that the legislature appears to be following Senator Carl Kruger's lead in his bill-S4736-that was introduced this week, we can hazard a guess that the entire UPC issue will be eliminated as part of the amendment process.

And the June 1st inception date? Unlikely to hold firm; with a push back until sometime later in the year more than likely.