For a long time now, I've been in favor of repealing the bottle bill and no longer collecting a deposit on bottles. However, you have provided me with the first piece of evidence I've seen that the bottle bill does encourage recycling in this day of curbside collections. My argument against was that the deposit law doesn't encourage recycling, but if that argument isn't valid, then I will flip my vote to a YES.
If 80% of bottles with deposits are recycled, while only 25% of bottles without deposits are recycled, that does imply that deposits encourage recycling (or, logically, there is a specific property of the bottles without deposit that make them inherently less likely to be recycled -- correlation, rather than causation -- though I can't see what that property would be).
How does it encourage recycling? Is it because some areas don't have curbside recycling, and this is the only way to get people to recycle there? Is there some other reason?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2014-11-03 01:51 (UTC)If 80% of bottles with deposits are recycled, while only 25% of bottles without deposits are recycled, that does imply that deposits encourage recycling (or, logically, there is a specific property of the bottles without deposit that make them inherently less likely to be recycled -- correlation, rather than causation -- though I can't see what that property would be).
How does it encourage recycling? Is it because some areas don't have curbside recycling, and this is the only way to get people to recycle there? Is there some other reason?