New York has collected a nickel tax on bottles since 1982, while Virginia now "taxes" bags at a nickel apiece.  Where does that money go: averting climate chaos or patching local budgets?  And is there a better way?

On September 28, a U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee held a hearing on the implications of waste from bottled beverages.  It got me thinking.

It's been 40 years since New York State enacted its bottle deposit law.  I was in New York in graduate school at the time, and then-governor Mario Cuomo hawked it as an environmental cleanup measure.

New Yorkers have spent forty years schlepping bottles back and forth to the store.  I'd like to know some things:

• How many people buy bottles and don't bring them back to the store? 
• Have we ever done a demographic study of the non-returners to find out if they're primarily poorer folks who don't want to lug empty bottles around all day 'til they get to the store versus those nasty wealthy plutocrats who can zoom up in their Porsches?
• What happens to the money that's paid but is never reclaimed?  What kind of windfall is that for New York, and where does that money go?

I ask because these kinds of "tax your trash" schemes seem especially to proliferate in blue states.  Before Glenn Youngkin took over Virginia in 2021, the previously blue Legislature imposed a nickel-per-plastic-bag tax on the state, again, ostensibly, in the name of the environment (that is, "climate change," the "existential" threat to humanity). 

I'd really like to know how that nickel averts climate apocalypse versus, more likely, plugging holes in the commonwealth's budget.  I'll admit, there are two grocery chains in the area.  One asks, at self-checkout, "How many bags did you use?"  The other asks, "How many bags would you like to buy?"

As regards the latter query, my honest answer is "none."  Of course, I must ask whether the local commonwealth attorney — who ignores real crime in the name of "restorative justice" — might decide to save us from environmental Armageddon by enforcing bag fees. 

The one advantage of Virginia's system is that one can at least get a bag.  Back in my much bluer native New Jersey last summer, I found I could not get a bag for love or money.  The Legislature had simply outlawed them.

Consider our "service" culture.  I go to the grocery store.  I pay inflated prices.  I then am supposed to engage in self-checkout, because stores won't hire enough cashiers.  I can't get a bag to tote the inflated goods I bought home.  And I need to run across the parking lot with my cart to get a quarter back because the poor store can't hire a teenage kid to make a few bucks in the afternoon collecting carts.

After considering these various tax schemes, which I suspect do more for the health of big-spending states than the environment, I have to say I'm beginning to like the system I experienced in Switzerland.  When I lived there, it was simply illegal to throw bottles away.  The trashman would not collect them.  Every Swiss brought bottles back to a recycling collection point, usually right outside most stores, bins available 24/7.  They sorted them by color.  Folks usually made it a once-a-week habit.  And, perhaps most importantly, there was no deposit.  It's simply what people, who had no other way to discard the empties, were expected to do and did without the government nickel-and-diming them while enriching itself. 

Any American takers?

Image: RawPixel.com.