A coalition of Massachusetts environmental groups says it is launching a summer boycott of Worcester-based Polar Beverages next week, to protest the company’s opposition to expanded bottle recycling legislation.
Environmental groups have been pushing for years to broaden the so-called “bottle bill” in Massachusetts. That’s the decades old law that requires consumers to pay a 5-cent deposit on certain beverage containers. They want it to include plastic water bottles, nips, and other containers, as well as to increase the deposit amount from five cents a container to 10 cents.
Kirstie Pecci of the waste-reduction advocacy group Just Zero says including a broader range of containers in the bottle bill would also shift the cost of recycling to beverage manufacturers and away from cities and towns, which currently pay for their recycling.
An effort to get the legislation passed stalled out again in the current legislative session, with the measure left out of an environmental bond bill now being finalized in a conference committee.
“There are a number of nonprofits in Massachusetts who’ve been working to modernize the bottle bill for decades, and over and over again we’ve hit an unreasonable and really confusing block to that getting done,” Pecci said. “And finally, after years of working on this and talking to legislators, it became clear that the influence of Polar Beverages, a large employer in the Commonwealth, is outsized.”
Pecci says the company has paid lobbyists to oppose the bill and has worked through the American Beverage Association to prevent its passage. Polar’s president and CEO, Ralph Crowley is the treasurer of the American Beverage Association and sits on the board of directors.
In 2014, the American Beverage Association successfully lobbied against a Massachusetts ballot measure that would have expanded the bottle bill, and has opposed legislative efforts since then.
“Year after year, similar proposals have gotten no traction as voters recognize that there are other recycling programs that make more sense,” the American Beverage Association said in a 2015 article on its website.
“Bottle bills are antiquated policies that have no significant impact on the environment — and make it much more difficult for people to recycle,” the statement read. “Instead of having to clean out your bottles, store them at home and lug them to the store or redemption site, it’s simply easier just to put all of your recyclables at the curb.”
Advocates point out that the cost of curbside recycling falls on cities and towns, rather than on the beverage companies that pick up the tab for the redemption system.
“Cities and towns are paying somewhere between $25 and $35 million a year more than they have to … for their recycling, and for picking up the litter in their communities,” Pecci said. “The city of Boston alone would save $4 million a year if the bottle bill were modernized.”
Pecci says she and three other activists met with Polar’s executive vice president and the company’s chief operating officer in December, in an effort to find common ground. Since the existing bottle bill covers carbonated beverages, she contends that Polar is already paying handling fees on the vast majority of the products they sell.
“Modernizing the system in Massachusetts would not have that much of an impact on their bottom line,” Pecci said. “Their products are already included in the bottle bill. The reason they’re doing this is because they don’t want to see a good idea that makes beverage producers responsible for the mess they’re creating take hold across the country.”
There are nine states in which beverage companies are responsible for paying for bottle recycling, Pecci said.
“And so they don’t want the 41 states where the beverage company gets a pass — they don’t want that to change,” she said.
Pecci says the activists tried in that December meeting to find an area where they could agree, and mentioned the possibility of including nips in the state’s bottle redemption system.
“As we were leaving, he said, ‘no, you are the enemy,’” Pecci recalls. “And that’s how [Polar executive vice president] Chris Crowley looks at environmental activists in Massachusetts.”
“He was pretty curt,” said Sheila Burkus of the group Mothers Out Front, who was also in that December meeting. “He did not mince words.”
Both Polar Beverages and the National Beverage Association forwarded inquiries from GBH News to the Massachusetts Beverage Association, which responded with a written statement.
“Massachusetts’ beverage companies support improved recycling and have funded recycling improvements in our state, but expansion of an inefficient, costly, inconvenient deposit system is an idea that 73.5% of voters rejected because they want convenient, efficient solutions,” Executive Director Stephen Boksanski said, referring to the 2014 ballot initiative. “We need to work together to modernize recycling, not take actions that will punish hundreds of hard-working employees at one of the Commonwealth’s oldest beverage companies.”
Mothers Out Front is among the organizations supporting the boycott, which will be formally announced next week.
“We understand we’re not going to affect their bottom line with our boycott,” Burkus said. “We get that. It’s really raising awareness to the community as well as the legislature. Why are we letting companies like this stand in the way of a bill that is beneficial on so many levels for our state? And that’s really what we’re looking for.”
Polar Beverages claims on its website to be the largest independent bottling company in the United States.
Pecci says organizations supporting the boycott also include the Alliance of Climate and Environmental Stewards, Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence Climate Action Group, Climate Action Now Western Massachusetts, Friends of the Malden River, Elders Climate Action Massachusetts Chapter, Charles River Watershed Association, The Climate Reality Project Massachusetts Southcoast Chapter, Clean Water Action, Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, Mystic River Watershed Association, Templeton Community Against Toxic Waste, Beyond Plastics Greater Boston, MetroWest Climate Solutions, Seaside Sustainability, Berkshire Environmental Action Team, Quincy Climate Action Network, UU Mass Action, Progressive Democrats of Massachusetts, Slingshot, and Sustainable Wellesley.
