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Deposit on bottles could curb trash

May 14, 2008

As I looked at The Sun's photos of floating trash captured by booms and trash, in one case, being removed by a water-powered conveyor, I cannot help thinking that if there were a five-cent deposit on each of the bottles among the trash, they wouldn't be there ("Path to a cleaner harbor," May 13).

Ask residents of states that charge a deposit on beverage containers and they will say that there are no bottles littering their roadways, parking lots, streams and harbors.

And yet the General Assembly once again failed to pass a bottle bill during this year's legislative session.

We could reduce litter by a large percentage if we had a bottle bill and banned plastic shopping bags.

These two items alone make up about three-quarters of the trash in the harbor and the streams that flow into it.

John Martin

Baltimore

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