LANSING- Michigan’s beverage container law, commonly called the “bottle bill,” could expand to help recycling efforts.

Sen. Michael Switalski, D-Roseville, has proposed an expansion bill that would add juice and water bottles to the 10-cent deposit law.

Michigan United Conservation Clubs, MUCC, supports the proposed extension because it would promote recycling, Executive Director Dennis Muchmore said. The MUCC led the petition drive to impose a 10-cent deposit to soft drink and alcoholic beverage containers in 1977.

Adding a deposit to juice and water containers could help the economy, he said. Currently, there’s between $13 and $14 million in unclaimed deposits paid on containers found in litter around the state yearly.

Milk and other beverages that require pasteurization would not be included in the expansion, Muchmore said. “There is a high disease rate among these products’ containers,” he explained.

Retailers, grocers and bottle companies would take on the costs of making their buildings bigger and hiring more workers. Critics say.

James Clift, policy director of the Michigan Environmental Council, said the bill would reduce litter. “There’s between 750 million and 1 billion bottles found on streets and around shores in bottle litter.”

Clift said there would be a revenue increase due to the creation of jobs.

He also said retailers can use sophisticated machinery to handle a larger influx of bottles.

But Michigan Retailers Association Vice President Thomas Scott said the expansion would do nothing to improve recycling.

“Expanding would make matters worse,” he said because stores would need more personnel and would have to add storage space for more bottles.

Scott said bottles are often returned in unsanitary condition and expansion would lead to health problems.

That would require more funds being spent on cleaning bottles, as well as more space to hold more recyclables, he said.

The association has supported the possibility of funding for a community-wide and statewide recycling system.

Edward Deeb echoed Scott’s words. The president of the Michigan Food & Beverage Association was involved in the original deposit campaign.

“It started as a referendum and needs to be introduced again as a referendum, not an amendment” to the existing law, Deeb said.

Deeb said that retailers are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea when it comes to the costs of taking in the bottles.

“Stores have to take dirty bottles and cans,” he said, “and the state and federal governments want food safety and disease-free buildings.”

His proposed solution is curbside recycling. He said that Michigan has gotten away from using the program, which was highly successful in the 1940s.

In 2003, the Senate put together a recycling task force to look at Michigan’s high rate of pollution.

Sen. Cameron Brown, R-Fawn River Township, submitted the task force’s final report.

“Expanding the bill wouldn’t necessary increase recycling,” Brown said. “The costs to the businesses would bring hardships on retailers.”

Brown said problems at redemption sites need to be addressed before any expansion of the deposit law.

He said he supports funds to increase community recycling and assist local governments with grants. Brown also supports tax credits to businesses that use recycling processes and reverse vending machines. Those vending machines would not allow out-of-state bottles to be redeemed for deposit.

Legislation presented by Rep. Steve Bieda, D-Warren, could be another aspect of expansion. His bill would require all bottles distributed in Michigan to have a standard bar code for the state to prevent other states’ bottles from being redeemed.

The retailing and grocers associations oppose that bill as well.

The Attorney General’s office reported 15 people were arrested and $500,000 was confiscated in an Operation Can Scam raid. Two Ohio-based smuggling rings scammed the state out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in bottle deposit money, the agency said.