RALEIGH – All too often, government policymakers choose the clumsiest tool they can find to do a job. That is, indeed, an important reason not to give governments too many jobs to do.
A good case in point is a bill introduced by Sen. Doug Berger, a Franklin County Democrat, to impose a 10-cent deposit tax on beverage cans and bottles. As in previous deposit systems, the money would be refunded at “redemption centers” to, I assume, either the original consumers or whoever brings the containers back.
Berger’s stated goals are to reduce solid waste in landfills, combat littering, and increase the percentage of beverage containers recycled to 60 percent or so, up from the current 20 percent to 30 percent. Picture these three goals as screws, each with a different head: flat, Phillips, and Robertson. Berger’s tool of choice – a tax levied at the point of sale – doesn’t fit any of these screw heads. In fact, it’s a sledgehammer. It can certainly be used to make some progress in each task, but wastefully and destructively.
Consider first the issue of landfill capacity. To the extent that North Carolina communities are generating so much solid waste that they are close to exceeding their landfill capacity, it’s not obvious that a deposit-based recycling system is the most efficient response. We could open new, environmentally safe landfills in communities that would welcome them. Landfill operators could raise overall tipping fees or adopt variable-pricing policies that charge households or businesses more based on weight or volume for garbage headed to the landfill. Singling out beverage containers doesn’t make a lot of sense, given that according to the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the largest components of the discarded waste stream include construction and demolition debris (29 percent), paper (18 percent), organic material (12 percent), and wood waste (11 percent). Plastics (7 percent), glass (3 percent), and metals (1 percent) are further down the list, and only a share of each of these categories consists of discarded beverage containers.
If the goal is alleviating stress on landfill capacity, in other words, you have to target the volume of garbage. Cans and bottles don’t comprise much of that volume, and let’s not pretend otherwise.
With regard to the second goal, reducing litter along the state’s highways and beyond, why should everyone pay more – or, at least, be made to collect and return their containers to avoid paying more – because of the misbehavior of a few? Littering ought to be discouraged directly, by public education and by higher fines. Littering is not caused by the existence of unrecycled containers. It is caused by laziness, rudeness, and contempt for the rights of others.
Finally, if policymakers want to set a goal to increase recycling, they need to be clear about what they are trying to accomplish. Charging accurate prices for landfill use may well increase recycling rates, for example, but that’s not really the proper end. It’s a means to an end. If, instead, policymakers want to treat recycling as an end in itself, on the grounds that it reduces energy use or environmental degradation, they need to make sure their numbers add up. Recycling consumes energy, too. Assuming that recycling always has a net environment benefit is risky, because the equation is built on a set of variables whose values are constantly changing. The best policy is to seek to present consumers with accurate prices – capturing disposal and transportation costs – and then allow them to make decisions accordingly.
Their decision may be to recycle their bottles and cans (my older son, the Little Conqueror, already operates a fairly extensive recycling enterprise within our neighborhood, with the assistance of his pals and pere, for entirely capitalistic motives). But it may not. It may make more sense to devote scarce resources to addressing larger-scale pressures on landfills or the environment.
Don’t mean to shock you, but I have thus concluded that the proposed new tax is unwarranted.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.