Abstract for The Policy History Conference, 2006.
Beverage container legislation, also known as bottle bills, was introduced in many markets in the 1970s and 1980s to remedy some of the environmental impacts of the beverage industry. The bills were intended to reduce litter, ease the burden on solid waste facilities, and encourage recycling activities. This paper will examine the implementation of bottle bills in three markets in the 1980s: Norway Sweden, and New York. Technology played an important role in this implementation process but the results were different in the three markets. I will show how conflicting interests between breweries, grocers, consumers, environmental policy makers, and equipment vendors led to three highly different deposit systems. I will argue that policies need to create room and structures to allow technologies to help them.
Bottle deposits originally were industry-organized initiatives to buy back empty bottles. This was cheaper than producing new bottles. This primarily economic incentive gradually disappeared with the introduction of new production methods and new materials. Disposable beverage containers became increasingly more popular. As a result of this development, the littering of empty containers grew. This highly visible environmental problem was the background for the introduction of politically motivated bottle bills. Industry resisted these bills in varying degrees; the opposition was strongest in the US, less so in Scandinavia. In Norway and Sweden today, returning your bottles is as natural as checking your mail. More than 99% of all refundable beverage containers are returned. In New York, however, the resistance to bottle bills has been much higher and the results are mixed.
I will argue that these different outcomes stem from the role technology has been given in the implementation of the deposit systems. The reverse vending machine (RVM) is a technology that has been made to facilitate the return of empty bottles and cans in grocery stores. Tomra Systems, the world’s leading producer of RVMs, were present in Norway, Sweden and the U.S. in the 1980s, and played an important role in creating feasible recycling policies in Scandinavia. The technological component was successfully integrated in these markets, whereas in the U.S., industry opposed the technological and organizational solutions that could have made the deposit systems work.
By examining how industry and the public responded to the highly contested bottle bills, this paper will argue that the bottle bills’ varying degrees of success in different markets can not be properly explained without considering the role business actors and technological components play in implementing policies.