On The Bar’s Tab

Bars and restaurants in North Carolina are cleaning up their acts when it comes to container recycling, particularly glass bottles.

While a small percentage of these establishments recycled their beverage containers voluntarily, a new law that went into effect earlier this year mandates recycling at establishments with on-premises malt beverage, unfortified wine, fortified wine and mixed beverages permits.

The North Carolina General Assembly passed House Bill 1518, which Rep. Joe Hackney introduced, during the 2005 legislative session. HB 1518 requires holders of specified Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) permits to separate, store and recycle containers for alcoholic beverages consumed on premises. In 2007 the bill was amended to require permit applicants to submit a plan for the collection and recycling of their alcoholic beverage containers. It was then ratified as House Bill 267, with an implementation date of Jan. 1, 2008.

Scott Mouw, environmental supervisor/section chief for the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance (DPPEA), says because these establishments already require a permit, they are obvious targets to pursue about extending responsibility for recycling.

The bill met with some resistance from restaurant industry lobbyists, but their efforts were ultimately ineffective in stopping the bill, Mouw says, as were their efforts at getting the law repealed.

The penalty for failing to comply with the ABC recycling law is not as stiff as the penalty for serving alcohol to minors, which could result in the revocation of an establishment’s ABC permit. "Losing their permit was way beyond the appropriate punishment," Mouw says of establishments that fail to recycle. Instead, bars and restaurants can face fines for noncompliance with the ABC recycling law.

To help ensure compliance with the law, language was added to require permit holders to submit their recycling compliance plans when renewing or applying for their ABC licenses, Mouw says. Along with their application forms, applicants for ABC licenses are required to submit one of three additional documents to the ABC Commission: a form providing information on the establishment’s recycling hauler, including a copy of the service contract; a form indicating the establishment will haul its collected containers to a drop-off location or to a local recycler; or a form requesting an exception from the recycling program.

While establishments must submit either the form detailing their hauler or their self-hauler status yearly, exemptions are currently a one-time application process, Mouw says. However, the ABC Commission is currently reviewing the exemption process and may require permit holders to file for an exemption yearly.

The DPPEA also has established a program of checks and balances to verify permit holders’ compliance. The DPPEA surveys haulers regarding the bars and restaurants they are servicing, cross checking this information against what the bars and restaurants submitted. "This is part of how we made sure compliance was as widespread as possible," Mouw says.

The agency also put together what Mouw refers to as a "cheat sheet" of haulers throughout the state and the services they provide. "We tried to get as comprehensive a list as possible for each county in North Carolina as to service providers," he says. When the DPPEA gets calls from bars and restaurants looking for service providers in their areas, agency officials are able to consult the list and quickly refer them to possible service providers or drop-off locations.

A variety of agencies are responsible for the enforcement of ABC laws and commission rules in North Carolina, including the recycling stipulations. While the ABC Commission handles the permitting, and the DPPEA provides technical assistance, Alcohol Law Enforcement (ALE), a division of the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, offers on-the-ground enforcement of ABC laws. In 2009, ALE’s role will expand to include checking to ensure establishments are collecting containers for recycling, Mouw says. ALE and the ABC Commission have the authority to fine establishments that fail to recycle under the ABC law.

While Mouw says he hasn’t heard of an establishment being fined for failing to recycle under the law, he says that may happen in the next few months. "It would probably help for there to be a signal that this is being taken seriously by the enforcement agencies," he says.

The DPPEA and the North Carolina General Assembly also recognized that some bars and restaurants in the state did not have viable options available for the collection or drop-off of their recovered beverage containers and that an exemption process would be necessary.

Mouw says the DPPEA has processed 156 exemption requests in 2008, with all applicants being granted partial exemptions for glass bottles. Most establishments have access to facilities where they can recycle aluminum cans, but glass can be challenging, especially in rural areas.

While North Carolina’s ABC recycling law was aimed at improving the recycling

North Carolina is home to three glass plants—an Owens-Illinois (O-I) plant in Winston-Salem and two Saint-Gobain plants in Wilson and Henderson. O-I also has two facilities in the neighboring state of Virginia in the cities of Toano and Danville. North Carolina also is home to a glass benefication facility operated by Strategic Materials, based in Houston.

According to O-I, its Winston-Salem, Toano and Danville plants will benefit from North Carolina’s law. "Each plant is expected to benefit from a minimum of 10,000 tons of available recycled glass and increase current cullet rates by at least 10 percent," according to "Recycling Pays Off" in the Spring 2008 issue of O-I’s LookingGlass publication.

"The glass folks in particular were excited about the bill," Mouw says. While he says the industry was not active in lobbying for the law, the Glass Packaging Institute (GPI), Alexandria, Va., helped with the DPPEA’s education effort.

"In our estimation in representing the glass container manufacturers, this law is another way to get quality cullet outside of the traditional MRF (material recovery facility) scenario," GPI President Joe Cattaneo says. He adds that the growing popularity of single-stream collection has had a negative effect on the recovery of glass that is suitable for container markets.

The lower value of glass relative to other recyclable containers can mean the material is treated in "a less expeditious way," Cattaneo says, with the negative sorting process resulting in breakage and a higher residue rate. "It is a totally recyclable package, but the cost of recycling it is more expensive than its intrinsic value."

While Cattaneo says he’d like to see North Carolina’s ABC recycling law adopted by other states, he acknowledges that glass can be difficult to manage in relation to access to consuming markets.

Mouw says North Carolina is well positioned in terms of its proximity to glass consumers, making glass recycling a more viable option for that state than in some others. "You have to have end-use demand and processing capacity to feed the end-user demand," he says. "It has to be efficient geographically because glass is heavy and hard to transport."

Mouw continues, "The best thing the glass industry could have done and can still do is increase the price they are paying for material and pass their energy savings back through collectors and permit holders. Basically the law is an unfunded mandate on permit holders."

According to Mouw, bars and restaurants are spending from $50 to upwards of $200, with $100 being the average cost, to comply with the ABC recycling law.

For states contemplating similar laws, Mouw says access to glass consumers and benefication facilities is important. He adds, "We would not have been as successful as we have been had we not done our homework and figured out what each permit holder’s options were on an individual basis."

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted at dtoto@gie.net.