Vermont Sierra Club wants Bottle Bill Expanded, Not Repealed
VT Sierra Club Media Contact: David Ellenbogen, Chapter Vice Chair, 802-363-6868, pianomath@gmail.com
There are few laws in Vermont that have benefitted the environment more than the Bottle Bill. With a return rate of approximately 85% (more than twice the statewide recycling rate), the Bottle Bill has cleaned our roadsides, lessened our reliance on landfills, and lowered our carbon footprint. Indeed the bottle bill is one of the few ways in which manufacturers are currently being held responsible for the packaging in which their products are delivered. We in the Sierra Club have long supported the notion of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and this is exactly why we would like to see the Bottle Bill not only kept in place, but expanded to keep another 8 million noncarbonated beverage cans and bottles out of Vermont’s landfills and off of our roadsides. With this in mind, we in the Vermont Chapter of the Sierra Club are outraged that the beverage industry has the audacity to reference our literature, taken out of context, in an effort to upend the most successful recycling program in state history. In a letter addressed to the beverage industry’s lobbyist, Amy Shollenberger, we asked that any reference to the Sierra Club be removed from the website she established for the beverage industries lobbying firm, MacLean, Meehan, and Rice. The Sierra Club supports the Bottle Bill, as well as the expanded Bottle Bill called for in H.74 and S.21, while Ms. Shollenberger’s website promotes a beverage industry-backed bill (H.218) that is highly critical of returnable bottles and cans. Our request has gone unheeded and unanswered.
Referencing the Sierra Club report on Producer Responsibility Recycling (www.sierraclub.org/committees/zerowaste/producerresponsibility/index.asp) in an effort to give the impression that we support a misguided attempt to dismantle a cornerstone of Vermont’s environmental stewardship-one that an overwhelming majority of Vermonters support-is deliberately misleading. Surely Ms. Shollenberger did read, just a few paragraphs lower on the very webpage that she references, that the Sierra Club believes that “There are laws that make producers responsible for taking back their products and recycling them. Bottle bills are an early example.”
Our letter also urged Shollenberger to disclose the fact that the beverage industry is paying for the website that makes such misleading use of the Sierra Club’s name and statements. At present, the website lists only Shollenberger as a contact and fails to identify the beverage industry’s involvement. Only at the bottom of the home page there are the words “paid for by MMR.” A link provided indicates that MMR stands for MacLean, Meehan, and Rice, a Montpelier law firm. No mention is made of the fact that MMR has been hired by the beverage industry to lobby on their behalf.
It is important for the public to know the truth here. Not only does the Sierra Club fully endorse the expansion of the Bottle Bill that is called for under H.74 and S.21, we remain clearly opposed to H.218 and the attempted ‘greenwashing’ being conducted by Ms. Shollenberger and the beverage industry. The Bottle Bill remains a landmark piece of environmental legislation. The Sierra Club will not sit idly by as an industry lobbyist resorts to desperate measures in an effort to weaken it.