Glass Bottle Recycling at Austin

Plastic bags are currently banned in Austin, but the thousands of recyclable glass bottles that are thrown out by the nightclubs and bars still go to landfills. This is because small businesses in Austin, which are of 100,000 square feet and below, are not required to recycle yet. Hopefully, this is going to change in the near future.

Bottle Waste in the City Of Austin

The laws in Austin city do not require glass bottles to be recycled. But according to Bob Woody, the owner of several bars in Austin, a typical Austin bar would have a turn-over of 3000 beer bottles on any Saturday. This results in a huge amount of recyclable trash that goes unnecessarily into landfills. Most of Woody’s own businesses recycle beverage containers, but that is because Woody himself feels bad about adding unnecessary waste to landfills. Encouraging eco friendly promotional items can be expensive for businesses, and according to him, for recycling to become sustainable, the businesses should get some incentive out of it.

A Bill to Solve the Problem and To Promote Eco Friendly Promotional Items

Currently, 17 billion glass bottles are thrown away in Texas every year, out of which only 4 billion are reprocessed. Texas landfills contained 600,000 beverage bottles and cans in the previous year alone. Having noticed this staggering amount, Houston senator Rodney Ellis is trying to pass a bill, called the bottle bill, which attempts to solve this problem. This bill aims to impose mandatory glass bottle recycling for every business, and proposes that businesses be paid a nickel for each bottle they recycle.

However, contrary to Ellis’s expectations, this bill is not getting much positive response. The bill has not been able to get past the committee yet, due to lack of support. Also, the bottling and beverage companies seem to be against this bill. This surprises the senator, since this bill is in the interest of these very companies. According to Woody, if the companies are resisting because they are looking for profit, then they should stop, because recycling is not about making profit. It is about helping the environment. He feels that recycling should have been made mandatory long before.

Even if the whole of Texas has not yet started encouraging eco friendly promotional items, the city of Austin will have a recycle mandate by 2017. It is already close to making all its businesses recycle bottles. The cities of Houston and Dallas have already started pilot programs for commercial recycling, but it is a mandate in neither of them. The cities of San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis, however, have made commercial recycling mandatory.

Source: http://www.myfoxaustin.com/story/22401630/austin-citizens-required-to-recycle-but-not-bars