Bottle bill: at what cost?

We are two Tufts alumni who proudly work in Massachusetts state government today, in large part because of the community-first ethos that our alma mater holds dear. Whether that’s tutoring children at a local school, grabbing a bagel at Oxfam or volunteering with the Leonard Carmichael Society, Tufts students are intrinsically engaged in communities beyond our gates and maintain a strong belief that "we" can build a better future.

And we know that a healthier environment plays a role in that.
 Nothing proves that more than the annual commune of pre-frosh with nature known as the Tufts Wilderness Orientation (TWO).

But a building-a-better-future public policy of asking for a nickel deposit on a beverage, a policy conceived of by an outdoorsman in the 1970s to protect Oregon’s nature trails and a policy that brings together business, government and the individual in a combined effort to ensure a healthy environment for the next generation is being publicly questioned in Massachusetts headlines in part because a Tufts professor accepted $7,000 to put out a one-sided analysis of the issue.

The bottle bill would add a five cent deposit to your next bottle of water (we all use nalgenes anyway) or Gatorade. Your nickel couldn't even buy one Swedish fish at Jumbo Express. But Professor Jeff Zabel's fee could pay for 140,000 of those deposits.

Professor Zabel’s analysis doesn’t seem to mention that four in five beverage containers that have a nickel deposit are recycled, while only about one in three without the deposit get recycled.

The cost of this effort? Small fractions of a penny per container.

We’re liberal arts majors, but we can do that math. And that’s the math we think Tufts cares most about.

We could pretend these costs to the industry won't be put on the shoulders of consumers, but at Tufts we're all too smart for that.

Do you think a tiny fraction of a penny on your beverage purchase is worth nearly a billion more plastic and metal and glass containers recycled in Massachusetts next year?

We do. And we’re willing to bet most of the Tufts community does. Because unlike Professor Zabel, we’re willing to consider the "we."

And as Tufts students who always critically examine everything (see: trick-turning), we're asking Professor Zabel to clarify his work, publicly, and analyze the economic cost of the bottle bill, not just its accounting costs.