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The PFB wants at least a five-cent deposit placed on bottles
and cans as an incentive to recycle. Incidentally, a news con
ference was held at the Kopp Farm more than 13 years ago to
show the need for a mandatory deposit on bottles and cans.
On Monday, Donaldson and Kopp walked along some of
the road frontage of the Kopp Farm, picking up bottles, cans,
and other trash that motorists illegally dumped from their
vehicles.
Kopp said, “Bottles arc the culprits of a lot of cut tires on
our farm machinery.” He held up a sharp piece of a brown
beer bottle that could slice through a tractor lire, resulting in a
repair job cosung between $5O-$ 100, he said. It costs $BOO to
replace a tractor ure.
Kopp also pointed out a dire threat to the livestock
pieces of aluminum cans. Cans which arc thrown haphazard
ly into htay fields get caught up in forage harvesters and shred
ded, mixing with feed. Kopp showed those who attended the
conference pieces of the shredded cans that have ended up in
the feed bunk.
Even though the harvester is equipped with magnets that
can capture iron and steel, the magnets have no effect on
aluminum.
Autopsies of dead cattle are expensive and are only per
formed, according to Kopp, when a chronic health problem is
suspected. But what about a few downed animals that die of
mysterious causes? Kopp said, “I have to wonder is some
of (the trash) getting into their stomachs and cutting holes in
their stomachs and causing complications?”
It’s hard to put a dollar estimate on the kind of financial
losses tallied as a result of cows eating the litter-contaminated
forage, Kopp admitted. But it could run easily into thousands
of dollars.
Opponents of the proposed Bottle Bill have said that man
datory township recycling laws have done much to stem the
flow of trash into farmers’ fields. But “the recycling law is
not working to solve the problems we have out here in the
country,” said Kopp.
In Londonderry township, home to about 2,500 residents,
there is no mandatory recycling law. However, townships
bordering Londonderry, including Derry and Swatara and
Lower Swatara, have recycling laws. Kopp said there must be
some kind of financial incentive for people to recycle the cans
and bottles. Now, however, people sec no value in the trash
and simply toss it out the window.
“Our society has become such a throwaway society,” said
Kopp, “that we don’t want to take responsibility to dispose of
any of our litter.”
Kopp said one day he was working in the field and saw a
pickup truck coming down the road. A man was leaning out
of the passenger side window. Kopp saw an arm dangling out
the window and a bottle went flying the passenger was try
ing to hit a road sign as they drove by.
A lot of underage drinkers also dn ve the miles of road fron
tage and have to get rid of the “evidence,” Kopp noted. He’s
seen whole cases of beer dropped out of the window and land
on his field.
“It seems like weekends arc our biggest time for litter. Peo
ple are out partying and probably a lot of that is underage
drinking. I found here yesterday cans, not even bottles, not
even open yet, lying alongside the road . . . beer, mostly.”
People don’t have the incentive to keep the bottles and cans
they buy, sometimes before they come home from work, for
recycling. Many people won’t make that extra effort to put
that trash m the recycling bin, insisted Kopp.
A fivc-cent deposit on bottles and cans would change that.
(Turn to Page A2l)
Kopp held up a shart piece of glass from a broken
bottle a real culprit to tires on the farm.