Bottle Bumblings

If you live in a state besides ME, VT, MA, NY, HI, IA, OR, CT, or one of the Elysian states of CA or MI, you may not be familiar with what’s known as the “bottle bill.” In Iowa, it works like this: I buy an eligible beverage, such as a can of soda pop. I leave a nickel deposit at the cash register for each container I buy. I consume the beverage, but save the container instead of throwing it away. When the number of empty containers in our home reaches a critical mass of filling every available horizontal surface, I return them to the store to retrieve my accumulated nickels.

I loved the bottle bill as a child. Back then, I had enough free time to collect cans from around the house and around the neighborhood. Instead of trying to grasp the concept of getting back the nickel I’d already paid, I wanted the $2 I’d get for returning three dozen empty cans. That would buy my day’s worth of baseball cards.

Now that I’m older with more responsibilities than sorting a few thousand baseball cards, the bottle bill has lost some luster. The empty containers take up too much room. They’re messy. It’s a hassle to make a special trip to the store to get my nickel back. I always have at least one oddball container in my stash that came from an unknown store, and don’t even think about taking it back to a store that doesn’t sell that brand because they’ll spit that dried-corn syrup coated container right back at you to carry back home, assuming of course that you don’t throw it in the trash on the way out.

Don’t get me wrong; the bottle bill aids in recycling and keeping the environment clean, two causes that I support. But I could recycle and keep the environment clean just as well by dropping my empty containers in the green bin. Doing so might even do more to save the environment since I wouldn’t have to burn hydrocarbon fuels making a special trip to the store.

We collect containers slowly, maybe one or two a day. The kids are too young to drink soda pop that doesn’t come from grandma, so they don’t add empty containers. I usually drink a can a day for the caffeine to sustain me through the post-nap, pre-bedtime lull. Occasionally Ellie brings home a container from work. At that rate, we only have to visit the store once every few months.

Yesterday was our special trip to the store day as I finally tired of kicking empty containers around the house. Ellie kept the boys at home while I took Abbie to experience the wonders of container return. The process involves feeding the containers one at a time into the appropriate machine: plastics in the plastic machine, glass in the glass machine, cans in the can machine. After feeding all your cans, you push a button, get a ticket, and redeem it at a register to receive your deposit.

Unfortunately, the stores don’t make money on bottle deposits, so they do everything in their power to discourage you from reclaiming the nickel they’re legally required to give you. At least one machine is always full and beeping loudly to inform everyone but the employees of its status. The redemption room is always sticky with an odor that could cover up the fullest diaper. Logically, there’s always a line.

None of this phased Abbie. The machines enthralled her with their “whir, kachunk” noise as they accepted can after can, punctuated by the sporadic “whir, kachunk, spitoo” noise when I tried inserting an oddball container. We counted together as I redeemed cans. When she lost interest, I gave her a couple bottles and let her feed them into the machine. When that wore off, we counted again because there was little else to do until I finished feeding dozens of containers.

The final tally was about 170 containers. That doesn’t count the half-dozen oddballs I left sitting on the shelf. We took the tickets to the register, collected our nickels, and drove home. We stopped for frozen custard on the way home, though, because I had to do something with my sudden windfall.