NPI to close Red Oak redemption center
After more than 37 years of operation, Nishna Productions’ Redemption Center will close its doors on Dec. 31, 2021.
The center, which opened at its current location at 210 S. Broadway on April 3, 2012, has been operating at a loss each month and has struggled to maintain the manpower necessary to process the increasing volume of bottles and cans.
Despite numerous legislation introduced annually, law-makers have failed to approve revisions to the bottle bill – revisions that would have made it possible for the redemption center to remain open. Iowa’s bottle bill has remained largely unchanged since it went into effect in 1978. The 5-cent deposit and penny handling fee for redemption centers haven’t changed, and inflation over that period has made it economically unworkable for many businesses.
The failure of Iowa’s bottle bill, according to ISU economist Dermot Hayes, “is that it wasn’t indexed for inflation. If it was, the nickel deposit on alcoholic and soft drink beverage containers would be 17 cents and the one-cent handling fee would be three cents.” At the handling fee rate of one cent per item, Nishna Productions is losing, on average, $85,000 annually.
According to the Container Recycling Institute, beverage containers comprise 40 to 60 percent of litter in non-deposit states. In contrast, in states with bottle bills in place, beverage containers make up an average of 8.5 percent of all litter. The most recent numbers from Iowa DNR (2017) reported an overall deposit container recycling rate of 71 percent. That’s the equivalent of 1.7 million bottles and cans that have been redeemed and are not in Iowa’s landfills and ditches per year.
Four of five people responding to a 2017 Des Moines Register poll said they wanted to keep or expand the redemption center system. Ten years ago, more than 200 stand-alone redemption centers existed in Iowa. Now, there are 100 fewer; 26 of Iowa’s 99 counties do not have any centers Montgomery County will be added to that list at the end of the year.