Last January Washington, D.C. began implementing a tax on disposable paper and plastic carryout bags. The 5-cent fee on bags produced an almost immediate reduction in the usage of single-use bags and their subsequent appearance in area waterways.

The bag tax is great and all, but it makes me wonder: Why doesn’t DC have a bottle bill? Charging a deposit on beverage containers would not only work to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills, city streets and waterways, one of the goals of the bag tax, but it would also provide an income of sorts for some of the less well-heeled residents of the district.

Naysayers who think that no one in DC will bother collecting cans and bottles for a mere nickle or dime deposit need only visit a city like New York where the sight of residents picking through the trash for returnables is a frequent occurrence. And, just this week, I encountered a man in Northeast DC pulling along a wagon of metal cans he’d collected for scrap.

A common argument against implementing a bottle deposit is the cost to consumers; 5 or 10 cents per bottle can rapidly add up. That said, unlike the bag tax, which is nonrefundable, the deposit is just that, a deposit. Bring the bottles back to the store and voila, you get your money back. If you can’t be bothered to return the bottles, the money can go to someone else, most likely someone who needs the income, however meager.

Sadly just 10 states have bottle bills (California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Vermont.) Delaware repealed its bottle bill in favor of a flat 4-cent tax to fund curbside recycling. With more than 17 percent of its population living below the poverty level and roughly 6,000 homeless residents in 2009 it’s hard to find a compelling reason why DC doesn’t have a bottle bill that is good for the environment and good for the district’s poorest residents.

–By Jennifer E. Cooper