Time for a TN Bottle Bill

Every year, some 4 billion beverage containers get wasted in Tennessee. That's a recycling rate of just 10 percent.

It's also $50 million worth of manufacturing feedstock squandered, 1,600 recycling jobs not created and a quarter-million tons of glass, plastic and aluminum dumped into our landfills or onto our landscapes. And according to disturbing new research, it's also a growing contributor to the plastics crisis in our oceans. 

Tennessee has a chance to turn these numbers around. How? By putting a refundable 5-cent deposit on most beverage containers, with returns to independent redemption centers funded mainly by scrap value and unclaimed deposits. Many of these small neighborhood businesses will be operated by nonprofit organizations, such as homeless shelters or agencies serving people with special needs. The others will designate at least one nonprofit "buddy," from Scouts to school bands, to benefit from donation bins and bottle drives. 

That's the goal of TennCan: The Tennessee Bottle Bill Project  (www.tnbottlebill.org). TennCan is a project of Scenic Tennessee, an all-volunteer 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1987.

For more than ten years, TennCan volunteers have been talking with citizen groups, counties, recyclers, manufacturers, government regulators and a lot of legislators from both sides of the aisle in order to build support and consensus for this proposal. We've toured redemption centers in other states to learn what works and what doesn't. We've consulted with economists, policy experts and industry insiders to make sure our bill can accommodate inevitable fluctuations in scrap markets and commodity prices. We've listened to legitimate concerns and adjusted the proposed legislation to address them. We've hosted public forums, created videos and given hundreds of presentations to make sure our fellow Tennesseans understand this proposal. And we've done pretty much everything we can think of, from appearing on call-in talk shows to going door-to-door in neighborhoods to bicycling 880 miles around the state, to make sure they support it. 

And overwhelmingly, they do. According to every measure, including two professional, randomized public-opinion polls (the MTSU Poll and one by the University of Tennessee Social Science Research Institute), more than 80 percent of Tennesseans are in favor of a 5-cent deposit. 

Our task now is to rally a good portion of that 80 percent to take action—to speak to civic groups, to organize letter-writing campaigns, to give fun presentations in schools, to meet with candidates and legislators. This kind of organizing takes money, and that's why we're mounting our first-ever GoFundMe campaign. 

We're hoping to raise $5,000, but we're starting this campaign at a more modest $1,000. The majority of funds will be used to host a volunteers' training workshop in Nashville on August 11 (www.tnbottlebill.org/training ), including printing resource materials, providing lunch, making a donation to the host church, and covering travel expenses for out-of-town speakers and students. (P.S. You're invited!) Any remaining funds will be used for travel and other expenses as we continue rallying supporters right up to the start of the 2019 legislative session.

Ten+ years is long enough. It's time for a Tennessee bottle bill.