As lawmakers debated the budget that would bring the session to a close this year, General Assembly leaders pulled the plug on the bottle for the next 18 months. Instead, House Speaker Joe Shekarchi, D-Warwick, and Senate President Valerie Lawson, D-East Providence, announced they favored a study on the legislation that was slated to create a joint bottle redemption and extended producer responsibility (EPR) for packaging programs.
The legislation, which was subbed into the main bottle bill/EPR legislation introduced in both chambers, mandates the Department of Environmental Management, Department of Administration, and the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation to pursue 鈥渁 statewide needs assessment to determine the infrastructure, policy, and programmatic requirements necessary to support a statewide redemption and recycling plan.鈥�
鈥淭here is still a great deal of conflicting data as to the implementation of best practices to address the problems of improving and disposing of our recyclable products, as well as enhancing our anti-littering efforts,鈥� Shekarchi and Lawson said in a joint statement released June 16. 鈥淲e believe it would be in the best interests of Rhode Islanders to conduct a needs assessment, as other states that have adopted programs have done. We have the full faith and confidence in DEM, Resource Recovery and other key stakeholders who will develop a report to inform us on the best approaches and costs to address this important environmental issue.鈥�