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Old 04-29-2017, 02:45 PM
 
440 posts, read 515,101 times
Reputation: 452

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I'm looking to find a local group that is working to get an amendment put through in Florida that would make all beverage containers returnable as there are a lot of beverage containers not being recycled.

I have a basket on the front of my bike and when I ride around in the Fort Lauderdale area, I can easily pick up 10-15 cans, glass and plastic bottles that I put in in my bike basket and make sure they end up in recycling containers.

Besides seeing all this stuff thrown on the streets, it's obvious to me from seeing public waste barrels filled with plastic and glass bottles, along with cans, that there is tons of stuff going into landfills here that could have been recycled.

Since plastic is made from oil and it takes a lot of gasoline to take all this stuff that could be recycled to land fills and it's thus helping to keep us dependent on foreign oil, I'd like to do even more than I am now to save energy and keep our landscape clean so if anyone knows of a local group that is working to make sure all this stuff being hauled to landfills would be recycled by the bottling companies instead of being wasted by getting a returnable beverage container law passed in Florida, please let me know.
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Old 04-29-2017, 09:23 PM
 
311 posts, read 445,952 times
Reputation: 627
How would you go about accomplishing all this recycling?
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Old 05-08-2017, 07:50 PM
 
440 posts, read 515,101 times
Reputation: 452
Default The Bottlers Pick It Up

When I was in college in Michigan, I worked to get a law passed to make all beer and soda bottles returnable like they used to be in the days before bottling companies figured out they'd make more profit if they didn't have to pay drivers to pick up the bottles and cans that had previously been returned to stores so consumers could get the money back they put down as the deposit.

After the law was passed, things went back to the way they used to be but instead of the bottling companies disposing of picked up cans and plastic bottles where they would end up in a landfill, they sold them to recycling centers and jobs were created not only to pick up the returnables from the stores, but more jobs were created at recycling centers because more cans and bottles were coming into the recycling centers to be sorted by workers instead of the cans and bottles without deposits on them being thrown away and going into landfills.

And if someone had put a 5 or 10 cent deposit on a can or bottle, if it was thrown out of a car window somewhere instead of returning it, kids and other people seeing it laying on the ground would pick it up and turn it in at food stores for the money so you don't have the litter problems in Michigan like you do here in the Fort Lauderdale area where it's evident a lot of people are too lazy to recycle a can or bottle and throw it out their car window instead.

Michigan, a state now heavily dependent on tourism due to job loss in the auto industry there not being as big as it once was due to Americans buying foreign built automobiles instead of those made in the U.S., is extremely clean and free of most litter because of the law that puts a deposit on cans and bottles which is not the state of affairs with much of Florida, which by the way has suffered financially because of the large number of tourists who no longer come here from places like Michigan because of the loss of jobs in those places due to so since so many automobile owners here who buy and drive foreign built cars.

Could you imagine with the current number of homeless people in the Fort Lauderdale area the number of cans and bottles that would get picked up daily by people throwing them out their car windows if homeless people found out they could get five to ten cents for turning in every can and bottle they found on the streets? And imagine how nice it would be to not have to see those cans and bottles thrown onto our steets, sidewalks and medians here because most educated people would realize they are losing 5 to 10 cents every time they throw a bottle or can out of a car window.
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Old 05-09-2017, 02:22 PM
 
224 posts, read 226,806 times
Reputation: 368
Great. You want to know where it's still all going to end up in my household? The trash.
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Old 05-09-2017, 05:12 PM
 
311 posts, read 445,952 times
Reputation: 627
You do realize that all those recycling "jobs" being created are either public sector jobs (read: burden to taxpayer) or private sector jobs that pass on the charge to the consumer (you and me)?

In the past few decades, the amount of littering, both recyclable and otherwise, has been reduced probably 10 to 1. This is because of public sentiment and awareness. Not .05 deposit.

I am glad you "fixed" Michigan but we don't want that fix here.
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Old 05-24-2017, 11:10 AM
 
440 posts, read 515,101 times
Reputation: 452
Default Maybe You Like Bottles and Cans along Roadways

I think you may be speaking just for yourself when you say that we don't need to fix the problem of not having returnable cans and bottles in Florida like other states like Michigan do. Why don't you head out to the beach sometime, particularly in front of those mulit-million dollar homes that sit directly on the beach facing the ocean between Oakland Park Boulevard and above Sunrise Boulevard, and witness for yourself the overflowing trash barrels along the public walkways to the beach on the weekends that are full of plastic bottles and aluminum cans that are going into landfills while Broward County states it's working on getting people to recycle more yet doesn't have any recycling stations set up at the beaches?


Or maybe you can join some of the clean-up crews from organizations that "adopt" sections of streets and highways to try to keep them clean of all the cans and bottles people throw out their car windows and see for yourself what a poor job some people in the Fort Lauderdale area do in regard to taking the time to properly handle materials that can be recycled.


I don't like living in an area that's littered with cans and bottles being thrown out of car windows by careless people and I'm sure the tourists who come here don't enjoy spending their vacation money to look at how poorly things are taken care of here by a minority of people who seem to have to have laws passed to get them to properly dispose of their trash. I'm all for giving a 5 to 10 cent reward to those who pick up the littered bottles and cans thrown out by others when they pick up and return a beverage can or bottle to a store because there is a deposit required to be put on it by law.


And, by the way, the public sector does not pay anything to run recycling plants. They are privately owned and they employ their employees with the money they take in selling used plastic, glass, paper, etc., to the many companies across the U.S. that are concerned about our environment and not wasting limited natural resources and thus use recycled materials in their products and packaging.
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Old 05-24-2017, 01:54 PM
 
224 posts, read 226,806 times
Reputation: 368
Quote:
Originally Posted by HotandHumid View Post
I don't like living in an area that's littered with cans and bottles being thrown out of car windows by careless people
I'd venture to guess that said acts were intentional, rather than careless.
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Old 05-25-2017, 05:50 AM
 
Location: Davie, FL
2,747 posts, read 2,613,456 times
Reputation: 2461
Please, NO. We don't need FL to join the circus of idiots doing bottle refunds.
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