2007 House Bill 5148: Require returnable beverage container bar codes and related equipment

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Introduced by Rep. Steve Bieda (D) on August 29, 2007, to prohibit the sale of returnable bottles and cans in Michigan unless they contain an add-on universal product code (bar code) that identifies the container as a Michigan returnable one. Merchants who use “reverse vending machines” (which are the automated bottle and can return machines used by stores to collect beverage container returns and calculate customer deposit refunds) would be prohibited from using ones that are not capable of reading the UPC bar codes. House bill 5147 requires that the machines be capable of capturing and destroying at least 85 percent of the non-Michigan returnable containers inserted into them.
- Referred to the House Great Lakes and Environment Committee on August 29, 2007.

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1) Identifying "foreign" Containers by Anonymous Citizen on September 22, 2007
Destoying the "foreign" containers sounds good. But with the current machines, they have difficulties already identifying valid cans. People are going to get irate when they have the machine mis-read a good container, call it a "foreign" container. The requirement of 85% of the "foreign" containers does not put any requirement on the reading of valid containers. I believe that the manufacturers of the reverse-vending machines will be overly zelous in calling containers "foreign" and destroy them without compensation in order to acheive the 85% rate.
Note that an 85 percent rate amounts to one can in every 6-pack to be improperly identified.
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2) 2007 House Bill 5148 (Require returnable beverage container bar codes and related equipment ) by admin on January 1, 2001
Introduced in the House on August 29, 2007

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