Bottle bill threat
As a legislator who has submitted measures to address plastic pollution and a fervent believer in recycling, I found the title of LD 1204, “An Act to Increase Recycling and Composting by Creating the Maine Recycling Fund,” intriguing. Here potentially was a combined approach to increasing recycling while simultaneously improving composting in Maine.
Unfortunately, the bill actually would harm our state’s highly successful bottle bill. LD 1204 would remove larger containers from our deposit law, reducing the rate at which they are recycled. Maine has the strongest bottle return program in the country. We recycle about 90 percent of our bottles and cans, which is more than double the state’s recycling rate for other items. Why weaken such a successful program?
The real intent of this bill is transferring millions of dollars to the beverage industry, and the recycling funding in the bill is not nearly enough to boost recycling and composting. In fact, municipalities would lose nearly $14 million while redemption centers, the state and charities each would lose about $1 million. Worse still, the powerful Recycling Advisory Council established in the bill would be strongly biased toward the beverage industry.
We must improve our overall recycling and composting rates, but there are other ways to get there without a giant special interest giveaway, such as employing more reusable bags, better education and public awareness and harnessing new advances in technology.
Rep. Mick Devin
Newcastle
Carbon tax
Lee Chisholm wonders in his April 28 BDN letter to the editor what to tell his young students when they ask what we’re doing about climate change. Given our governor’s lack of support for any efforts to improve our environment, many Maine residents are bypassing him and trying to persuade Congress to enact carbon-pricing legislation.
Two carbon pricing bills already are in Congress, and another one, drafted by former Secretary of State George Shultz, is being proposed by Citizens’ Climate Lobby. Because none of the three bills has a Republican sponsor yet, Citizens’ Climate Lobby members are lobbying Maine Sen. Susan Collins for her support.
Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s proposal is especially appealing because instead of returning fees to the government, it would return the fees evenly to citizens — money in our pockets to pay for the increased cost at the pump or for a more efficient car, a market driven approach to encourage a conversion to clean energy.
Collins undoubtedly would be impressed by a letter signed by Chisholm’s students urging her to support carbon pricing. It also would help the cause if these students write letters to newspapers to publicize carbon pricing efforts. A huge number of scientists and economists support those efforts, and more than 40 other countries already price carbon. Bill McKibben, an environmentalist and journalist, says no industry except the fossil fuel industry “gets to dump its garbage for free.”
Kudos to the students for being concerned about this issue. When they become voters, I’m sure they very carefully will screen candidates’ backgrounds regarding the environment.
Fern Stearns
Orland
Fight against addiction
Having read Dr. Eric Brown’s May 1 BDN OpEd about addiction, I am spurred to add my perspective. I have worked with this population over the years and witnessed the struggles to afford their treatment and maintain sobriety. It’s not easy.
Addicted people are surrounded by blaming individuals in the community and in the health care setting who fail to understand the disease and lack the compassion to put themselves into their shoes. These patients are as much the children and creations of a higher power as the rest of us. They are sisters and brothers with mothers and fathers who are part of our society and deserving of the mercy that an advanced society holds for people grappling with a disease.
To put a face on it, I personally have taken the time to instruct women in how to properly use their medication. During the course of our conversations, I have learned many things. Guess what? They have names picked out for their child. They either know or have hopes for the gender. They have plans to reconstruct their lives and get back to being good mothers and productive members of society.
Are they always successful? Of course not. This is addiction we are dealing with, here. Who among us has been 100 percent compliant with prescribed medication or a diet to lose weight? Neither of these take into account the added weight of addiction. For that, ask anyone who has had to quit drinking or smoking.
Leslie M. Ohmart III, RPh.
Brewer