Bill Looks To Raise Bottle Deposit to 25 Cents

The bill  LD 87 which was sponsored by Representative Pinny Beebe-Center was the topic of a public hearing in Augusta yesterday.

Reported by WGME if passed bottles and can would all carry a .25 deposit.  Liquor bottle deposits would not change with this proposal.

To us this seems a bit extreme.  Going from .05 to .10 would be hard enough to swallow (no pun intended) but five times.

And neither the actual bill or story say why this would be advisable or what the hope to accomplish by doing it. What would you think? Are they trying to get us to drink less soda? Still water and juice containers would go up the same?  Are they trying to reduce litter? Do they need the money for something specific State needs?  In a separate story from WGME it cites the effort is to help redemption centers struggling with rising costs, including increases in minimum wage.  It also noted there were actually nearly a dozen bills at the statehouse proposing some kind of increase, not all as deep as Rep Beebe-Center's.