Bottle Bill and Assembly

So last week was a great meeting! We had guest speakers from the CSI NYPIRG explain the importance of passing the Bottle Bill in the state budget, and encourage everybody to write a letter to their state legislator urging them to pass the bill. Sample letters were passed out, and I have some extra if anyone wasn't here last week. We'll be collecting the letters this Friday and mailing them together, so please write a letter, and encourage your family and friends to do so as well!

The basics of the Bottle Bill, from http://www.nypirg.org/enviro/bottlebill/

"1) Make our communities cleaner and increase recycling by updating the bottle bill to include deposits on non-carbonated beverages such as bottled water, iced teas, and sports drinks, which weren’t included in the original law because they barely existed back in 1982. Today, more than 3 billion non-carbonated beverage bottles and cans end up in the trash or polluting our state’s rivers, beaches, and neighborhoods each year because they don’t have a deposit.
2) Generate new funding for local environmental needs by requiring beverage distributors to transfer any unclaimed deposits to the state. Currently, beverage companies are keeping an estimated $140 million a year in unclaimed deposits from bottles and cans that are not returned. The unclaimed deposits from an expanded bottle bill could exceed $218 million a year. New York is out of step with many other states, which require beverage companies to return unclaimed bottle deposits to benefit the public."

Afterwards we went over the powerpoint for the assembly again. It still needs a little work, but that's alright. This week we're going to see if the Bingo will turn out okay, as well as the weekly plastic bag collection!

Last week, McCown brought in substantially more bags than CSI did, and there's only five of them advertising it! Come on, CSI, get on it!

Also, if anyone hasn't bought a canvas bag yet, do it! We're going to be selling these at the assembly, and how terrible would it look if none of us had them ourselves?