We are all familiar with the bottle deposit on some of the drinks we purchase in the State of Iowa, aka the bottle bill. Iowa is one of ten states that have a bottle bill. When coming to Ames, I accepted that there would be a deposit on all of my drinks. This was not new to me, since I spent a few years in Europe (courtesy of the US Army), and there were bottle deposits on every drink container of a quarter Euro. There are two major differences between the Iowa deposit system and the one I used in Germany. First are the return options, and second are the types of beverages that have the deposit.
The first difference between the two deposit systems is on the return side. In Germany, I could return an empty drink container to any retailer for a refund of the deposit and/or apply it to the deposit of the next purchase. This system worked, and I hardly ever saw trash of any type, especially drink containers.
According to Herbert Peacock in the Des Moines Register, the Iowa beverage deposit is “a tax and inconvenience on the citizens of the state” instead of a deposit. In this story, Peacock outlines some of his attempts to redeem his bottle deposits in multiple trips to multiple retailers, costing him time and money. He outlines the time and vehicle usage he was not compensated for while attempting to collect his deposits, the broken return machines, and the return area being unpleasant. Peacock described the unpleasant redemption areas, which “smelled like stale beer and pop” and that his “shoes stuck to the ground after I left the area”…