Bottle Bills in the 1970s

By The Mother Earth News Editors
Published on July 1, 1978
article image
PHOTO: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
Throwaway bottles and cans made up about 10 percent of the junk in the country's public dumps in 1975.

The statistics in this article are for the 1970s, but bottle deposits and bottle bills are still important today as the attempt to reduce the number of throwaway bottles with bottle distribution laws is still going strong today. Visit the Bottle Bill websitefor more up-to-date information.

Can you name a quick, easy, inexpensive way to [1] clean up the nation’s highways, [2] reduce the amount of garbage in the city and county dumps, [3] save billions of dollars each and every year [4] create over 100,000 new jobs, and [5] conserve more than seven million tons of glass, steel, and aluminum every 12 months…as well as enough energy to warm some two million American homes for an entire year? Ban the throwaway bottle and can by supporting bottle distribution laws.

Back in the 1940s and 1950s — when a few of MOTHER EARTH NEWS’ more elderly staffers were still children — you could keep yourself in chewing gum, candy, and other teeth rotters by scrounging up and redeeming empty pop and beer bottles which in those days had a price on their heads! For example, in 1947 — when almost all soft-drink and beer containers sold were refillable — small bottles fetched 2 cents and quarts 5 cents apiece at any corner grocery or liquor store.

Pickin’s weren’t easy, though, because hardly anyone tossed out these treasures, which’d just pile up on the back porch — or in the garage — until someone would finally remember to haul ’em down to the market for a refund. In other words, even those few pennies on each bottle were enough to make sure that 95 percent of the containers found their way back to the bottling plants for a refill, and most were used 10 to 15 times — or more! — before either loss or breakage retired them from circulation.

No Deposit, No Return

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368