cb@hlwpc.UUCP (Carl Blesch) (08/01/85)
I'm going to change the subject drastically, but I'm not apologizing for it -- the newsgroup seems perfect for my question and the talk about soda formulae is starting to get stale (pun intended) . . . My question -- why is it that I can't buy Coke (or any other name-brand soda, for that matter) in returnable, refillable bottles in the greater New York City area? When I lived in Wisconsin and in Chicago, I bought my soda in eight-packs of 16 oz. returnables because these bottles were environmentally sound (I believe a returnable is good for about ten refills before it breaks, wears out, or whatever), and more importantly, the soda was much cheaper in these bottles than it was in cans or in 2-liter plastic throwaways. A typical eight-pack of name-brand soda (total amount of soda -- one gallon) in returnables was about $2 at retail and as low as $1 on sale. The cheapest alternative where I live now (New Jersey) is the 2 liter plastic bottle, which gives you a half-gallon of soda for the same price as a gallon's worth in returnables. I've asked a number of retailers here why they don't carry soda in returnables, and I've gotten a number of vague responses. Many of them don't even know what a returnable bottle is, even though you can see these bottles in television commercials. Their unique shapes and colors are used as a marketing technique to distinguish one soda from the other. Coke's sculptured pale-green returnable bottle, for example, is classic Americana. Can't say the same about throwaway containers, whose only distinction is the label printed on the side. Other retailers say that they don't want to pay stock clerks the extra money to handle returnables, that they don't want roaches crawling around their loading docks, or that unionized truck drivers want more money to cart back empties. Funny, if Chicago, a big city with high-labor costs, unionized truck drivers, and the same potential for pests crawling around loading docks, can handle returnable bottles, why can't the NY area? One store owner went so far as to make the ridiculous statement that we didn't have returnables in N.J. because there's no bottle law here! There are no bottle laws in Illinois or Wisconsin either, but you can buy returnables. Sorry if this is getting to soap-boxy, but I cringe whenever I have to pay twice as much as I'm used to paying for soda, and I also cringe when I throw away the containers, knowing that the landfills are getting fuller than they need to. Carl Blesch
bandy@lll-crg.ARPA (Andrew Scott Beals) (08/05/85)
A few of years ago, the big DC grocery chain, Giant, and one of their
competitors started having a price war and one of the first casualties
was the returnable 16oz bottle. (sigh) Now it's virtually impossible to
find anything in "real" bottles in the DC area.
Also, I never saw any returnables in NH or MA for the two years I was
there. I wonder why they dropped them, for the same reason, perhaps?
Of course, now that there aren't any returnables there, there are
people that want to go for a bottle bill.
--
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