Summary: Founded in 1991, the Container Recycling Institute (CRI) is a 501(c)(3), nonprofit organization that studies and promotes policies and practices that shift the social and environmental costs associated with manufacturing, recycling, and disposal of container and packaging waste from government and taxpayers to producers and consumers. CRI plays a vital role in educating policy makers, government officials and the general public regarding the social and environmental impacts of the production and disposal of no-deposit, no-return beverage containers and the need for producers to take responsibility for their wasteful packaging.
Last year, in an April 14th speech at the National Press Club, the then USEPA Administrator Mike Leavitt referred to the “emergence of a new environmental consciousness” in the 1970s. Living in Oregon at the time, Leavitt said he had “a clear memory” of Governor Tom McCall of Oregon proposing the nation’s first bottle bill. “It was controversial, but I got it. It resonated with me.”
“We couldn’t believe he said this,” said Pat Franklin, executive director of CRI. “Did he realize the can of worms he was opening up?” According to Pat, bottle bills are opposed by one of the most powerful lobbying conglomerates in the country. For the past 30 years, Coke, Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch and their bottlers and distributors have lobbied against taking responsibility for their beverage containers by blocking new bottle bills while working to repeal existing bottle bills in state legislatures across the country.
CRI knew that Leavitt’s comment presented a unique opportunity that they had to jump on. But how was a small grassroots organization with limited funding and resources going to turn on a dime and launch an effective attack. By using CitizenSpeak – a free email advocacy service for grassroots organizations – CRI was able to launch an email campaign that afternoon broadcasting what Leavitt had said and enabling people to take action.
“One of our interns found CitizenSpeak, created an account and launched an email campaign,” said Pat. “All she needed was the email address for Leavitt and some pre-crafted text from me for the letter. She emailed our base of supporters the link to participate and we were done. If CitizenSpeak had been any harder to use, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Over 250 people participated in their campaign asking Leavitt to urge President Bush to back “The National Beverage Producer Responsibility Act.” This bill, sponsored by Senator Jim Jefforts (I-VT), would require beverage producers to put a refundable 10-cent deposit on their bottles and cans sold in the United States. The letter also included compelling evidence in support of the bill. It noted that the 10 states that have implemented bottle bills recycle twice as many beverage containers per capita each year than the combined 40 states that do not have bottle bills – saving energy, conserving natural resources and reducing litter.
Over a quarter of the participants included personal statements in their emails. Some of them were just a sentence but some were long paragraphs providing powerful testimonials from people all over the country including,
*An activist in Maryland who unsuccessfully fought for the passage of a bottle bill in Maryland against the beverage industry,
*A New Yorker who referred to a survey in which 78% of the state residents supported a bottle bill,
*An Arkansas resident that noted that 75% of plastic soda bottles were either being landfilled or thrown out on the side of the road,
*A Hawaii Pacific University student that spends a day a month with other students taking plastic bottles and cans from students that would have otherwise thrown them away, and
*A recycling employee with the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources who wrote about the advantages of the bill to his state.
The campaign served as a shot of adrenaline for CRI. They were so inspired by the personal statements and overall support, CRI called Leavitt’s office and requested a meeting. At first Leavitt’s office wasn’t aware of the emails, but after they gathered them up, the office agreed to a meeting between CRI and Thomas P. Dunne, the Acting Assistant Administrator at the USEPA Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (who reported directly to Mike Leavitt) and five other high level employees in the department.
During the course of the meeting, Pat and the other CRI representatives impressed upon Dunne the need for the EPA to show leadership on this issue, for environmental as well as economic reasons. Americans throw away 130 billion containers each year clogging up landfills rather than feeding a recycling industry which is alive and well but held back by limited recycling feed stocks. Since the meeting, CRI has been invited by the EPA to participate in multi-stakeholder meetings this spring that will focus on beverage container recycling.
“If it hadn’t been for easy-to-use and affordable eAdvocacy tools, we would not have been able to capitalize on the window of opportunity that Leavitt’s speech opened up,” said Pat. “We might have posted a note on our listserv asking people to write a letter to Leavitt. Maybe 20 people would have taken the time and energy to tediously cut and paste the text and email it off to Leavitt. CitizenSpeak empowered bottle bill supporters and made the process of “speaking out” painless.”
