This is what I get for marrying a man from out of state. New York has a container deposit law on selected beverage containers. If it’s a beer or soda can or bottle, we pay five cents a piece on top of the selling price and then we are suppose to take them back to the store to get a refund. There’s a rule that applies; a store does not have to accept a can or bottle if it doesn’t sell that specific type of beverage. So even if Hannaford sells Pepsi products, they don’t have to accept 24 ounce cans if they only sell 16 ounce cans.
The other rule that Earl doesn’t quite get is that this only applies to beer and soda. It doesn’t apply to any other beverage. Water bottles, wine bottles and bottles of the nasty Sunny Delight are not returnable, they are to go into the recycling bin.
I don’t agree with the container law. It was a good idea back in 1984 before all the recycling programs of today, but with all the sorting, spindling and mutilating you have to do of garbage before it goes out to the curb, it seems silly to return these select bottles and cans when they could just be recycled.
I tend to get OCD about things like this. I have a separate bin for returnables. I’m considering putting up signs that say “beer and soda cans and bottles only”. I think Earl takes great delight in putting non returnable stuff in the returnable bin.
“Sweetheart, water bottles are recyclable, not returnable.”
“We don’t have returnable bottles in Pennsylvania.”
“I understand that, but you’ve lived in New York since 1995 and you’re a very intelligent man, I would think that you’ve grasped this concept by now.”
(big sigh), “New York”, he responds with a tsk tsk tsk motion of his head.
He then throws a milk bottle into the returnables to make his point.
