Returnables
The stay-at-home orders from Covid-19 have meant our garage is full of bags and bags of returnables here in Michigan, which has charged 10 cents for every bottle and can since 1976. At this time, for health reasons, grocery stores are banned from taking back the returns, so there’s no place to go - until now. A local charity called the Drew Crew is collecting them.The Drew Crew is a non-profit organization focused on helping individuals and families that have suffered a spinal cord injury or traumatic brain injury, so it’s a very worthwhile cause.
Ohio had a beer bottle returnable policy back in the 1950’s on the long neck bottles like shown above from the Cincinnati brewers. In fact, it was a nationwide policy establish in 1935, not state-by-state like today. There also was a deposit on the case if I recall. By the mid 1960’s, beer was being offered in cans, which avoided the long neck bottle deposit requirement. To compete, the glass bottle industry was also able to also get around the returnable fee by creating different shaped beer bottles, which eventually lead to the demise of the nationwide returnable policy, meaning each state was free to establish its own policy. Currently, nine states have returnables; California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont.
A local Shelby County company, Stolle Machinery, played a key role in the transformation of the beverage industry by the inventing the pop top can. An opener was no longer required, just pull a tab. One problem was the tabs were discarded and especially prone to injuring someone barefoot who stepped on them. Soon Stolle developed a pop top that kept the tab connected.
The glass bottle industry responded by developing a built-in opener integrated into the bottom of the bottle, and eventually evolved to the twist off cap so prevalent today.
Speaking of beer caps, Mary, the wife of a former co-worker whom we regularly see at our favorite lunch place, has a hobby of making earrings out of bottle caps! Every time we see her, I have to check out the brand of beer showing on her earrings. Turns out she’s not the only one with the hobby, as there’s quite a market for them on eBay. Here’s a set that sold for $8.
Having lived with and without returnable bottles here in Michigan, we observed firsthand the difference in terms of litter along roads and especially in rivers. For example, during my college days, we’d canoe the AuSable river in Northern Michigan and routinely dumped empty cans overboard.
The water was so clear, you could see the bottom of the river littered with discarded cans. But a few years after the returnable law went into effect, during another canoe trip, we noticed the river bottom was clear as canoeists saved all their cans for return.
Similarly, Canada has a bottle return policy, and during our fly-in fishing trips to northern Ontario. we had a 100 pound carry-on limit per person, which was mostly beer that we consumed while fishing and at the camp. Since the empty returnables were much lighter than when full, the fish we brought back made up the difference to keep us under the weight limit. This previous blogpost tells more. One tidbit - to allow more beer and fish, we literally layered up all our clothes and stuffed our pockets with fishing gear for the seaplane ride as they never weighed us, just our beer and tackle box.
Thankfully, our garage has been cleared out, a very worthwhile charity benefited, as did the environment.
Enjoy summer, don’t litter and stay safe, Fish Report readers.
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