Bottle bill may impact local business for the good | News, Sports, Jobs

Daily Freeman Journal photo by Kolleen Taylor

L.T. Redemption Center, located at 300 Second St., draws bottle and can recyclers from a large radius. The bottle bill that has been introduced again in the Iowa Legislature, would add additional types of cans and bottles to the facility to sort each day.

The recent bottle bill discussion in Des Moines, always is of interest to Tami Harrison, the owner of L.T. Redemption in Webster City.

Harrison’s husband, Logan started the business in November of 2004. Tami joined him in 2006. This is her 20th year of managing the recycling of the bottles and cans which have a nickel redemption fee attached.

Harrison has been running the business alone since her husband passed away in 2018.

Today, Harrison and her three employees handle about 20,000 containers each day, a number which has dropped when the amount she received for processing the cans and bottles increased to 3 cents in 2022.

“When they changed the handling fee to 3 cents, it was great and why I’m still here, but other redemption centers opened, so people didn’t have to travel as far.”

“We went from what to be 20,000 to 40,000 containers a day, down to 20,000 each day,” she said, “but I’ve taken in as many as 70,000 items per day.”

The bottle bill that is being considered would add additional items that could be redeemed; it would bring more similarly packaged containers into the Redemption Center.

“It would be a good thing,” she said.”It’s one of the things we fight, no one explains that there isn’t a deposit on those items.”

But, she said they’ve tried to pass a bill like that for years.

The number of items brought into L.T. Redemption is a bit startling, and it remains a positive business for Webster City. She has three employees who work between 30 and 35 hours a week most of the time.

“These three have been with me for over seven years, one over 13 years,” she said. And they help her sort the thousands of items that come in daily. If the bill passes, she says, she would need more help.

“I’m not Waterloo, it’s still a lot of items,” she said. “A lot are still going to the landfill. But I’ve started seeing new people, since the SNAP program has changed, disallowing pop and deposits to be paid through the program.”

Always helpful, always friendly, Harris reminds people some basics about recycling. She has restrictions that are based on what her distributors sell, so she cannot accept everything. So she has to stay within those guidelines. Right now, it’s carbonated drinks and alcoholic beverage containers.

But she really emphasizes that the bottles and cans need to be empty.

“Empty, rinse and return, that’s what it was always supposed to be,” she reminded.

It’s a business people that people under appreciate at times, but it is one that has a more significant impact than most realize.

“I don’t give the city a lot of sales tax money, but I draw them from Highway 30 to Highway 3, and people walk back out and spend it in Webster City,” she said.

So keep those cans and bottles coming, just remember: empty, rinse and return.