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Bill filed in Massachusetts legislature to increase bottle deposits to 10 cents, expand to more beverage containers

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Rex Roof, flickr
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Advocates say the 40-year-old container deposit law in Massachusetts needs updating because five cents is not enough incentive for people to return a soda can or bottle, so more are ending up in the trash.

The state's current "Bottle Bill" is 40-years-old

Among the thousands of bills filed in the Massachusetts Legislature by last Friday’s deadline to be acted upon in this session is an update to the container deposit law, better known as the “bottle bill.”

This new legislation would increase the deposit from five to 10 cents and expand the types of beverages covered by the program.

It has been 40 years since the original bottle bill passed in Massachusetts and environmental advocates have pushed for the last two decades, at least, to modernize it.

One of the advocates is Janet Domenitz, Executive Director of MassPIRG. She spoke with WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.