Beverage container reuse: a company profile

Under the now familiar integrated waste management hierarchy, source reduction is the preferred waste management option, followed by recycling and composting, energy recovery and landfilling. While the latter three options have been widely developed, source reduction - which includes reuse - is probably the option least understood by industry and government, and is still in its infancy in the policy and implementation arenas. The glass container industry has mounted concerted campaigns to promote recycling awareness through public education, and has also provided extensive technical support to local governments and small businesses seeking to establish residential curbside and commercial glass bottle recycling programs. Despite these commendable efforts, no campaigns have been instituted which specifically promote the reuse of the glass beverage container. Understandably, government has never attempted to mandate or encourage container reuse either, given the fierce opposition the container industry has mounted to defeat or weaken proposed deposit legislation in many states. Despite the stated policy emphasis on source reduction, no one is acting as an effective national advocate for the reuse of beverage containers, and little reuse is actually taking place today (see Tables 1 and 2, by beverage type

by Jennifer S. Gitlitz
Jennifer S. Gitlitz is an instructor and advisory board member of the UCLA Extension Certificate Program in Municipal Solid Waste Management. She is also a science consultant at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles.

For 15 years, Encare has washed wine bottles and resold them to the wine industry.

n Tablel

1989 beverage container sales in California, and packaging material Containers sold (millions) 8,900 3,200 396 530 360 248 52 302 175 60 847 759 I 1 800 17,629

Beverage type and packaging material Beer and soft drinks Aluminum Glass (NA.) Glass, refillable PET Wine (glass bottles) Liquor (glass bottles) Juice Aluminum Steel Glass (N.R.) HDPE Aseptics( 1) Milk, water, otherdrinks HDPE Paper cartons Total
N.R. = Nonrefillable

Percent of total 50.5 18.2 2.2 3.0 2.0 1.4 0.3 1.7 1.0 0.3 4.8 4.3 10.2 99.9

(1) Fruit juice, wine and milk containers. Extrapolated from 1999 national data, assuming California represente ll percent of the national market. Source: California Department of Conservation Drink Association, 1990. Division of Recycling, and CalifomWNevada Soft

22 Resource Recychg

July 1990

label was presented to the Queen of England on her West Coast visit in 1984, he said, and added wryly that an 82 Merlot was served last February to a highranking Japanese minister who was later indicted. Echoed Encare co-manager Peter Heylin, When Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev dined at the White House, Encare was there. Backhaul system used The sale of new glass bottles supplements Encore s bottle washing business. The company acts as a wholesaler of new glass bottles in order to bid competitively on winery orders that it would not be able to meet solely with sterilized bottles. This two-pronged supplying method allows Encore to serve a large clientele without depleting its stocks of sterilized bottles on a single order at any one time, and the winery still gets an average per-case price that is lower than it would pay for a complete load of new bottles purchased through traditional channels. Although some wineries pick up their orders at the Richmond plant, the majority of the loads are shipped to the wineries using Encore s own trucks. Transportation is economical because Encare uses a backhaul system; when a load of clean bottles is delivered to a winery, a load of ditty bottles is brought back to the plant for sterilization. The plant has operated around the clock three shifts a day, six days a week for well over a year, and a quick glance around the busy receiving yard reveals a stockpile of bottles awaiting sterilization. To meet the high demand for washed bottles, Encare has replaced one of its two bottle washing machines with a new one that has effectively doubled plant capacity since last year. During the same period, production has increased from 40,000 cases per month to an average of 65,000. For reasons of quality control, production has yet to meet full capacity. Explained Heylin, We don t want to send out a bogus product, so we re expanding slowly and conservatively. Encare maintains the same pricing structure both for wineries and postconsumer recycling centers ($0.72 per case of dirty bottles as of the first quarter of 1990). This translates into $0.06 per bottle, or about $120-$130 per ton, far higher than the typical industry scrap value of approximately $40 per ton for mixed amber and green glass. One would think that this price differential would attract the recycling operator because wine bottles are not officially re-

deemable under California s Redemption Act (l), but in reality, Heylin explained, the false economics created by the act are working to narrow what had been a wide margin between industry scrap values for cullet and Encore s prices for intact wine bottles. Although it is technically illegal for someone to commingle three cases of [redemption] soda bottles in with a huge load of wine bottles to try to get redemption money, said Heylin, it happens

frequently, and the state is incapable of enforcing the regulations. All the other players, such as grocers, have an incentive to keep reported return rates high in order to ward off a switch to a more stringent deposit law, he said, so the commingling continues. Committed to the principie of reuse Encare isn t just a company, he added, We are philosophically committed to the

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Resource Recycling

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concept of post-consumer reuse. But we can tcompete with the artifically high price paid for redemption glass. Under the California law, each time the state fails to meet its 65 percent redemption goal, the redemption value increases. On January 1, 1990, the rate went from $0.01 /bottle to $0.05 for two bottles. That rate could increase again within the next two years if the redemption target is not met. Heylin explained that unscrupulous recycling centers and other glass generators (even some wineries) have less of an incentive to segregate wine bottles for Encore as long as they can take advantage of the commingled redemption rate offered by the state. So far Encare has managed to keep its prices competitive with redemption values, but Heylin is not sure how long he can continue to do so. As a small business, he said, 1 just cari outspend the State of California. Despite the temptation to mix redemption glass and wine bottles to get the commingled redemption rate, many wineries continue to do business with Encare, because they not only receive revenue from the sale of dirty wine bottles, but they also

save lo-40 percent of the cost of new bottles by purchasing Encore s sterilized bottles. The Boeger Winery has purchased wine bottles almost exclusively from Encare for many years, Boeger said, II. . because the concept is ecologically appealing, the quality has been good and the per-case price is about $0.50 lower than new glass. At 12,000 cases a year, he said, the savings add up. What does the future look like? Future marketing trends in the wine industry could affect Encore s business, however. As Evans reflected, lt s all dependent on the attitude of the public and how much gets returned and thrown away and also on changes in packaging. There s always the potential for the market to fall to pieces, if the wine industry moved increasingly toward cans they re already selling wine in plastic bags, he noted. The marketing people in the wine industty are those who control how the product is packaged. Marketing strategies that incorporate unique bottles could also hamper future bottle reuse. For the most part, bottles

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are standardized according to wine type, but because some producers, such as Almaden, deviate from the standard for purposes of product identification, their bottles are effectively precluded from Encore s process. Evans is doing what he can to ensure the continuing influx of used bottles. A quiet, bespectacled man, Evans meticulously soldered Sharp thin rods to bolts as I spoke with him. When mounted on a rail, the contraptions will pull corks from bottles as they pass on a conveyor. These automatic decorkers of Evans own design will make it easier for wineries to save bottles, he explained. Because manual decorking is time-consuming, many wineries simply turn defective bottles of wine upside down and break the necks of the bottles with a swift knock. Although this method empties the bottles quickly and enables them to be sold as cullet, it renders them unusable for washing. The nature of the post-consumercollection mechanism will also affect Encore s future. Most drop-off and buy-back centers are not physically designed to accept segregated wine bottles and carbonated beverage containers; the only sorting that occurs is by color. Severa1 recycling center operators interviewed for this article agreed that the need to keep wine bottles whole and separate from other bottles would indeed be the greatest obstacle to participating in the Encare program. They said it is economically difficult to segregate wine bottles from other glass containers and to keep them unbroken (2). With curbside programs, even less glass sorting occurs. Most curbside trucks on the market today are designed for maximum capacity to enable longer and more efficient routes; this usually means minimizing the number of separate bins on the truck. Three bins are the norm in California: one for newspapers; one for mixed-color glass; and one for aluminum and mixed cans, or cans and plastic. This system does not easily allow for the segregation of wine bottles. One exception is the curbside program operated by the Berkeley Ecology Center. Director Kathy Evans (no relation to Dick Evans) explained how the trucks in Berkeley s curbside program were specifically designed to collect wine bottles. On each side, the area between the rear wheel Wells and the back of the truck has three steel compartments for storing wine bottles in corrugated plastic boxes. A larger space for boxes is located between the cab and front newspaper bin. Severa1 hundred wine bottles can be collected on

each route this way, although careful handling requires extra time. The Ecology Center is fortunate to have a spacious yard where a large volume of wine bottles can be stored before shipment. The center s proximity to Encore s Richmond plant - about 5 miles - also works in its favor.
Limits to growth The establishment of additional wine bottle washing facilities in the United States will likely be hampered by three factors: the trends in residential recycling collection methods mentioned above, proximity to a wine-producing region, and the price of new glass. Europeans have long depended on bottle washing, but according to Walter Taylor of Bully Hill Wines in upstate New York, this is because glass is more expensive in Europe, and because economies of scale operate to the advantage of the European bottler. Annual per capita consumption of wine in Europe is over 100 gallons, compared to less than two gallons per year for the average Ameritan. This higher consumption level has facilitated a well-developed and decentralized

bottling and transportation network which relies on collection and reuse. Other Ameritan wine-producing regions include Delaware, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, the Virginias, and Washington state. According to Encare and other industry sources, however, no comparable facilities for wine bottle sterilization exist. Taylor attributes this to the low price of new glass bottles in the United States. Although Encare is able to compete with new glass producers, on a national basis the economic incentive to wash bottles has simply not been strong enough to induce entrepreneurs to develop comparable facilities. We will sell no wine bottle before its time, reads a playfully altered winery marquee in the Encare Office, leaving one with the impression that the unique entrepreneurial spirit of Encore s founders is the crucial ingredient in the plant s success. RR
End notes 1. As amended, AB 2020 (The California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act of 1988)

requires glass manufacturers to pay a minimum average scrap price of $93 per ton for color-sorted glass to processors. Glass industfy representatives and recycling processors throughout California agree that this floor price is artificially high. Due lo the higherthan-expected 44 percent recycling rate, glass manufacturers have spent more for cullet than they anticipated (sand is cheaper), and, according to some recycling operators, have recently begun rejecting many loads to avoid paying the high scrap values. Although this situation is adversely affecting statecertified recycling centers and processors, it has not yet affected the individual collector. Under the act, the collector is still able to receive the entire redemption value of $0.05 for two [official redemption] contamers, ora commingled rate of 87 percent of the redemption value if non-redemption containers (water, wine and food) are mixed in and it is inconvenient to count or separate them. 2. However, such sorting mechanisms may be developed in the future, because in California at least, the rapidly increasing number of recycling programs has created a glass market glut. A special provision of AB 2020 that took effect in December 1989 now permits recycling centers to landfill redemption glass if no markets can be located. The specter of landfilling quantities of unsorted glass may soon forte recycling centers or glass processors to adopt meticulous three-color hand sorting lines as standard operating procedure; many centers do so already. These hand sorting lines could increase wine bottle recovery, depending on breakage rates in the trucks and in recycling center bins. Of course, the most reliable way to ensure reuse is lo keep wine bottles source-separated by providing a designated collection or storage area for them, either on the truck or at the recycling center.