Thursday, October 15, 2026
Plastic bottles blowing across local streets. Shards of glass sprinkled across schoolyards. Highway exits overflowing with cans.
That was New York in the 1970s — a time and place Joseph Varon remembers far too well.
“People just threw it away,” said the Malverne environmentalist. “And, sadly, some people didn’t even bother to do that.”
The Returnable Container Act, commonly known as the "bottle bill,” encouraged recycling by taxing each can and bottle a nickel, which could be redeemed once that empty can or bottle was turned into a recycling center.
It was signed by Gov. Hugh Carey in 1982, and outside of expanding to include water containers in later years, the bottle bill hasn’t changed much over the last four decades.
Today, Varon volunteers with the nonprofit Beyond Plastics, and helped found the Alley Pond Environmental Center in Douglaston — nestled between Nassau County and Queens — some 40 years ago.
He’s also been a Boy Scout leader for much of that time, his background in hiking leading Varon to care for the environment.
“I want to leave a clean and pristine world,” he said.
Varon pressed the state to adopt the bottle bill back in the ‘80s, walking alongside others from Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood to the Coca-Cola plant in Tarrytown.
And they succeeded, with the first nickels collected on drink containers beginning July 1, 1983. And although the buying power of a nickel has changed significantly over that time — cans of soda than cost just a quarter — the amount the state collects has not.
A proposed bill from Suffolk County Assemblyman Steven Englebright and state Sen. Todd Kaminsky hope to change that, doubling the fee from 5 cents to 10. Englebright and others like him believe raising that assessment would lead to extra revenue — the kind that would boost enforcement and create new redemption centers. The bill would add bottles for wine, spirits and hard cider to the list of permissible recyclables.
“There’s no reason why those bottles should not be included,” Varon said.
And such a bill could have local support. Assemblywoman Judy Griffin and state Sen. Kevin Thomas have perfect scores from the New York League of Conservation Voters when it comes to the environment.
Griffin and Thomas did not reply to a request for comment.
Since 1983, nearly 12 million tons of beverage containers have been recycled, according to Beyond Plastics. That accounts for 5.5 billion bottles and cans —yet accounts for just 64 percent of containers sold in New York.
The United States produces more than 300 million tons of plastic each year, half of which is used just once and then thrown away.
Environmentalists have pushed Gov. Kathy Hochul to add bottles used for liquor, wine and non-carbonated drinks to the list of recyclables, while raising the redemption fee to a dime, using the policy powers she possesses through the state budget. California and Maine are among states that have already done this.
The advocacy group Environment New York has blasted consumer dependence on single-use containers, saying that “nothing we use for a few minutes should be allowed to pollute our oceans and rivers and threaten wildlife for centuries.”
And that’s what drives Varon, as he looks for ways to bring a 40-year-old piece of legislation into the present.
“The bill is working, but we need to expand it,” he said. “The bottom line is we’re filling up our Earth and our oceans with plastic, and we have to stop using so much one-time-use plastic.”
