Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 14

14 Section 1 Chicago Tribune, Tuesday, October 27, 1987 Tho ssrbaga glut mm III Illinois, bottle bills get dumped container of beer or soft drink Amounts of deposits required per and years laws became effective ugons lowase-i (1972) (1979) i Ki M983 i (1983) 'A1 entry, with a program that began Oct. 1. Oregon was the first state to adopt such a bill, in 1971. The rest are Vermont, Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Delaware and New York. Most of these states require a 5-to 10-cent deposit for each returnable soft drink or beer container.

In most cases, the deposit is high enough to make it worthwhile to return a container. Only 25 years ago, every soda bottle in America could be redeemed at the grocery. But then came "convenience" packaging, and returnable bottles virtually disappeared until bottle bills forced a comeback. Bottle bill advocates cite these advantages: Energy savings by using recycled glass and metal, rather than raw material. Tax savings by reducing the cost of litter control and garbage disposal.

New jobs in retail stores, distribution and recycling to handle Dottles and cans. Litter-free streets and highways. Americans buy billions of throw-away containers a year glass, metal and plastic. The Illinois Environmental Council estimates that 310 million containers litter Illinois roadsides and streams each year, and that it costs the Illinois Transportation Department $3 million to pick them up. All bottle-bill states report visible improvements in litter.

"Our major motivation was an attempt to clean up litter on! highways, parks and beaches," said Ken Wozniak of Michigan's Liquor Control Commission, which administers the state's bottle bill. Michigan reports a 92 to 94 percent return rate, one of the highest In 1 989 win coolers will be added "Does not apply to aluminum cans or containers over 64 ounces Chicago Tribune Map; Source: National Soft DriK Aitoclaiton in the country. Bottle-return laws also have a downside, according to Beth Gibson, manager of Marshall's Liquors in Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan, where Gibson also is a student. "It is a bother," Gibson said. One problem is the occasional traffic jam at the cash register as bottle redeemers wait for their payments.

And, she said: "We have a lot of roaches. Even though the law says Dottles must be clean, there is always something left. Roach heaven is in the back, she said, motioning toward the rear store room. "It takes a lot of storage space. Taking care of bottles is a pain." Industrial sources also resist.

"Nobody wants mandatory deposits," said Larry Beasley, Midwestern recycling manager for Owens-Illinois Inc. He said such practices also raise customer costs. first Earth Day, April 22, 1970 Earth Day, a nationwide awareness campaign on environmental issues with the message "Give Earth a chance," is first observed April 22, 1970 The first bottle bill, requiring consumers to pay a deposit on all containers of beer and soft drinks, is proposed in Oregon in 1970; it becomes effective in 1972 Throwaway lighters are introduced into the market by Bic in 1972 The first disposable razor is introduced to the market by Gillette Co. in 1975 By 19S3, most large supermarkets are using plastic bags instead of or in addition to paper bags STOP INDUSTRIAL KILLERS!) bills have lost big in Illinois, and often. Every two years since 1971, proposals have been introduced in Springfield to impose deposits on returnable beverage containers as a utter-control measure.

They have been demolished by the state's powerful bottling and container-manufacturing industries, aided by labor unions. It's one of the state's longest-running losing environmental battles. But State Rep. Woods Bowman (D.i Evanston) says the growing national concern over garbage disposal could end this losing streak. "The time could be right," said the six-term Illinois legislator, who has sponsored bottle bills three times.

"If anything is going to breathe new life in the issue, it will be that." Ten states now have bottle bills. California is the most recent Recycle Continued from page 1 cycled instead of buried is reported stalled by "bureaucratic snafus." City officials see recycling as a bargain. They are drafting an ordinance mandating citywide recycling, prodded by activists who say Chicago is moving too slowly considering that the city might run out of landfill space in four to five years. This could throw Chicago into waste-disposal chaos, causing spiraling fees and health threats from illegal dumping. Elsewhere in Illinois, recycling programs suffered a setback in September when parts of the 1986 Illinois Solid Waste Management Act were ruled unconstitutional.

The act was aimed at raising $10 million a year from landfill fees to help programs around the state. Illinois has about 900 assorted recycling operations. Champaign, Ur-bana and Oak Lawn already have recycling programs in place. Lake, McHenry and Du Page Counties are exploring countywide solid-waste management programs that would include recycling. The United States has about 500 municipal curbside recycling programs, plus about 4,500 other less formal recycling operations.

These include buy-back centers, where people sell recyclable materials, and recycling dropoff stations, where people donate material to church or civic groups, which in turn sell the material and use the money for community purposes. Madison, has the country's oldest recycling program, 'dating to 1968, but the San Jose "program, one of the nation's newest, is attracting attention because of its success. "We make it as convenient as we can," explained Richard Gertman, San Jose's recycling coordinator. To this end, the city gives three yellow and green plastic crates to each household taking part in the program. As a result, 60 percent of the households use the crates to separate the cans, glass and paper from the rest of their garbage, as Ruth Jenkins does.

San Jose? started in 1985 with 60,000 households, and it expects to have the nation's biggest citywide recycling program by the end of this year, when it expands to 180,000 households. The goal is to reduce by 25 percent the amount of garbage San Jose must bury in landfills by 1990. This is expected to cut the city's garbage disposal costs by millions of dollars a year. San Jose has hired Recycle America, a subsidiary of Waste Management based in Oak Brook, 111., to operate its recycling program. Waste Management, the country's largest waste disposal firm, moved into recycling in 1978 and now has a dozen recycling contracts around Killing Continued from page 1 $10,000, but he would release the doctor on a low bond in return for the $10,000 already paid.

Branion was released on just $5,000 bond within days. Brown was stabbed to death in 1983. His killing remains unsolved, Chicago police said. In addition, Branion's current attorneys have filed a sworn statement from Patrick A. Tuite, a prominent Chicago defense attorney who was the prosecutor in the Branion case.

Tuite stated that, shortly after the jury returned a guilty verdict on May 28, 1968, Tuite heard a rumor that Holzer was going to free Branion because he believed the doctor had been wrongfully convicted. After the jury returned its guilty veitiict, Tuite said, he went to the judge's chambers and asked if the rumor were true. "Judge Holzer stated that he did intend to set aside the verdict," Tuite said. He said he urged the judge to let the appellate court decide the case and to disregard a motion to overturn the verdig sub 104 I 1 (1978) New York Sd Vermont 54 (1975) Main 54 (1978) Massachusetts (1983) Connecticut $4 (1980) Delaware" 54 (1982) major beer company, said, "My view is, Illinois is not ready for a bottle bill." Casey Bukro nies that see profit in recycling. It now collects material from 300,000 households in the Minneapolis-St Paul area.

In Ann Arbor, Bryan Weinert, recycling coodinator at Ann Arbor's Ecology Center, said, "We were a ragtag army of committed environmentalists who wanted to make the point that recycling was in the interest of the city. That is how the city's recycling program was bom in 1978. Today the city pays the ecology center $180,000 a year to collect glass, metal, newspaper, cardboard, used motor oil and used car batteries. The rest of the group's $275,000 annual budget comes from selling the material it collects. It covers 20,660 homes once a month.

About 25 percent of the residents pitch in to separate their garbage for recycling. "The (Islip, N.Y.) garbage barge is the best thing that has happened to us in a long time," Weinert said. "There is a growing awareness." In New York City, a curbside newspaper recycling program was started in November, 1986, and it now covers about 100,000 homes in the five New York boroughs. "The whole point of the program is to set up pilot, programs and expand them," said Laura Denman, the city's recycling project manager. New York hopes to recycle 15 per-, cent of its waste by.

1991. Processing centers will be open next spring to handle bottles and cans, although the city already has neighborhood buy-back In Rockford, the Rockford "Trashman" dresses like a clown, drives a red and yellow polka-dotted garbage truck and hands out $1,000 Erizes for trash. This unlikely figure as done more for garbage recycling in Rockford than all the lectures on how good recycling is for ecology. Underneath the costume is Todd Cratty, 24, an advertising executive with a serious message. His project is Cash for Trash, a recycling advertising campaign so successful that it is the talk and envy of communities around the country.

With props that include rubber chickens and fish, Cratty appears in television commercials and school assemblies, demonstrating how to separate newspaper, glass and cans from garbage, and why recycling is important. Cash for Trash began on May 19, 1986, and newspaper recycling has more than tripled, said Thomas Tullock, Rockford's sanitation superintendent Japan, meanwhile, is the world's champion recycler. Households there separate their wastes into from 7 to 21 recycling categories, depending on the city. Japan recycles 95 percent of its bottles, 75 percent of its aluminum cans and half of many other By contrast, the U.S. recycles 12 to 15 percent of its glass containers and about half of its aluminum cans.

of the murder scene indicate that a closet door in the couple's bedroom was kicked in and there was blood splattered on the carpet The bloodstains led to a utility room, where Mrs. Branion was beaten and nearly strangled with a cord. A pathologist testified in the trial that the bruises from the cord on Mrs. Branion's neck would have taken at least 15 minutes to develop before she was killed. D'Amato argues that one of the intruders held" Mrs.

Branion with the cord around her neck, while the other searched the apartment and found the Walther among Dr. Branion's extensive gun collection. When Mrs. Branion could not open the safe because she did not have the combination, she was killed by 12 shots, D'Amato said A neighbor testified that she had heard what may have been gunshots in the Branion apartment at about 11:25 a.m. When police arrived, there was no evidence that Branion had been in a brutal struggle with, his wife, his lawyers argued.

Prosecutors charged that the motive for the killing was marital problems. Two days after the slaying, Branion went to Vail, with a nurse from the clinic, and they later were married. L-W-1 American National Can Co. in Chicago, the world's largest packaging company, also is opposed to a bottle bill in Illinois. And Billie Page, a Springfield lobbyist for a A survey of recycling programs in other cities found: In Madison, Ted Jagelski, the city's recycling coordinator, said, "This was the pilot recycling project for the United States." It was a voluntary newspaper recycling Crogram when it started in Septem-er, 1968.

But on Aug. 1, 1986, the program became mandatory. "If there is newspaper in your rubbish, you are subject to a fine of not less than $5 and no more than $50," said Jagelski, who considers the program a big success. The city collects and sells about 2,000 tons of newsprint a year. It also recycles metal, wood products, office waste paper, concrete, asphalt and waste oil and composts leaves.

In Portland, Ore. the metropolitan area boasts the nation's biggest curbside recycling program, serving 1 million people. It reclaims 20 percent of the area's residential waste, high for a large metropolitan area, with 17 percent of the residents participating. "This is one of the largest areas in the world being served by recycling," said Jerry Powell, who started the program, the second oldest in the U.S. It was one of 3,000 volunteer recycling centers that sprung up across the country within six months of Earth Day, April 22, In Seattle Jhecity already recycles 24 percent of its residential rubbish through a' voluntary program.

The city will begin a curbside collection program next February, hoping to increase the recycling rate to 40 percent by 1997. Seattle and Portland also 'charge for garbage disposal by container, forcing residents to curb wasteful habits. Com- Eared with- the present -cost of garage "disposal, Seattle" expects to save money, according to Donald Kneass, the city's recycling project "We go from a loss for the first year," Kneass predicted. "But by 1992, for every ton recycled, the city saves $14.35. Over a 10-year period, the city is going to save $442,189 In Minneapolis, the city has the largest recycling program in the Midwest and second largest in the U.S.

But it wasnt easy. "Although recycling sounds like a simple and noble thing to do, we found out the hard way it's more difficult than it looks," said Michael Trdan, the city's recycling recycling began in 1983, targeting 120,000 homes. As with most urban curbside collection programs, Minneapolis covers single- to four-unit dwellings but nothing bigger. Record snows plagued the first months of the program, and then grim economic realities set in. In 1985 the market price for recycled newspaper dived to $5 a ton from $30.

The program was almost scuttled in 1986 when the budget department discovered that the city was losing money. It was saved, in part, by the entry of Super Cycle one of a growing number of private compa time to drive the 2.8 miles from the clinic to his home. Last year, Branion's lawyers arranged for the Traffic Institute of Northwestern University to test the travel time. The institute concluded that the trip could not be made in less than 10 minutes. "It is a factual and theoretical impossibility for the police to have driven the route as they claimed they did at 30 m.p.h., stopping for all stop signs in six minutes, the lawyers argued.

Boyle, who investigated the case and is now an assistant Cook County state's attorney, maintains the six-minute travel time, which he established by driving the route with a stopwatch, was accurate. "Whatever was testified to was accurate," Boyle said. He noted that during the intervening years, the area has developed, and it is likely now to be more congested. But Branion's attorneys argue that, given witnesses who testified that he made the two stops, it was impossible for the doctor to have committed the crime. The defense theory is that two men, intending to rob the couple, came to the door and were let into the apartment by Mrs.

Branion, D'Amato said. D'Amato said police photographs the nation. In San Jose, Ken Newman, operations supervisor at Recycle America, explains how his company gets a price edge on competitors. "We get top dollar by keeping the material clean," Newman said. From start to finish, newspaper, glass and metal are collected and handled separately, and they are inspected at the Recycle America processing plant by sorters who pick out items that don't belong.

Recycle America's collection trucks even have three separate compartments for newspapers, glass and metal. To make it easy for participants to remember to set out their recyclable material, the company picks it up on the same day that city trucks collect nonrecycla-ble garbage such as food wastes. Newman said Recycle' America's system enables it to sell used paper, metal and glass that are not contaminated with trash, which would lower their value. Some cities collect recyclable materials together and separate them later or send the mixture to a processor. Newman said this practice increases recycling costs, making it less economical.

Oak Lawn's pilot program for curbside pickup, also employing Recycle America, is the first of its kind in the Chicago area and began only Sept 17. Waste Management Inc. reports that 70 percent of the 3,400 homes in the test area participated in the first month, an encouraging figure, and that the program already is close to breaking even. Recycling dates to early America, when quilting bees were social events and an opportunity to use scrap materials. It was common in the United States during World War II and until the 1950s, when the postwar era brought about a new throwaway lifestyle.

Refillable glass beverage bottles were widespread in 1975. By 1981, throwaway containers had taken over. In the last 15 years, markets for recycled material were notorious for violent swings in demand. In 1975 the use of waste paper dropped 16 percent, to the lowest point in a decade. As recently as 1985, recycling projects were reporting hard times as a result of low prices.

But now things are looking up, bringing a new sense of optimism for recycling. Americans recycled a record 33.3 billion all-aluminum beverage cans in 1986, about half of all aluminum cans produced in the U.S., according to the Aluminum Association in Washington. That amounted to 1.2 bilhorivjpounds, for which recyclers were paid $200 million. Aluminum has always been the strongest recycling market because it pays so well now 40 cents a pound in Chicago. It's worth it for the aluminum industry because recycled aluminum can be produced with 95 percent less energy than a can produced from raw material.

The American Paper Institute in mitted by Branion's attorneys. A few nights later, Tuite said, he received a phone call from the judge insisting that Tuite go into court the next day and ask for a continuance on the motion to overturn the jury's verdict Since Holzer's own conviction, Tuite said, he has come to believe that the judge may have been looking for a way to solicit a bribe in the Branion case. "Looking back on it, in light of the evidence produced at Judge Holzer's trial in 1986, 1 believe that Judge Holzer, by asking that I request a postponement of the ruling on John Branion's motion for a new trial, may have been trying to put pressure on Branion for corrupt purposes," Tuite said. The statute of limitations on any alleged actions by Holzer in the Branion case has expired. Anthony D'Amato and Thomas Geraghty, two Northwestern University Law School professors who now represent Branion, contend that the alleged bribe payment and the secret discussions between judge and prosecutor denied Branion a fair hearing.

They say that Branion was not aware of the bribe scheme. In addition, they argue that the "physical impossibility of Dr. Branion having committed the i ii Gas masks symbolize pollution on the During World War II, throwaway paper milk cartons are introduced as an alternative to traditional reusable glass bottles; by 1960 most milk sold in stores is in throwaway cartons In the early 1960s, plastic foam cups and plastic garbage bags are put on the market Disposable diapers are introduced no the market in 1961; by 1987, 16 billion diapers are being thrown away in the U.S. each year Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson is published in 1962; it is among the first books to warn of the dangers of pollution 1. Recyclable items are removed from the solid waste disposal system.

1 Paper products (old newspapers, used corrugated boxes, used computer printouts), aluminum cans, glass bottles, other metal scraps are sorted at a scrap yard or plant. 3. Extraneous contaminants (such as plastic covers, Styrofoam coatings) are removed and each item is graded (such as, brown glass, clear glass, 4. They are prepared for shipment by compacting and baling. When the scrap yara nas accumulated a truck or rail carload it is shipped to a mill.

5. At the mill it is reconstituted into new material. Chicago Tribune Graphic; Source: National New York City said waste paper recycling is setting new records, with domestic and export consumption projected at 23 million tons this year. "The export market is booming now," said J. Rodney Edwards, the institute's vice president "Mills pay over $1 billion a year for waste paper," said Edwards, who pointed out that half of the trash on the infamous Islip, N.Y., garbage targe was paper.

"Every ton of paper you pull out saves 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space," he crime" should result in the doctor being freed. So far, the courts have not agreed. In September, then-Judge Susan Getzendanner denied the request to free Branion, now 61 and suffering from heart disease. Another federal judge is reviewing Getzendanner ruling and is expected to issue a new ruling next month. The Branion murder case has received considerable attention over the 20 years since Mrs.

Branion's death. She was the daughter of Sydney Brown, a wealthy black attorney. He is the son of John shall Branion a longtime Cook County first assistant public defender, the first black appointed to that post in Illinois. Branion did not begin serving his 20- to 30-year prison sentence until 1983. Shortly after the U.S.

Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 1971, Branion, free on another $5,000 bond, fled the country. His attorneys contend in court documents that the doctor, who had marched for civil rights beside Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966, fled because he was innocent of the crime and would be unjustly imprisoned. He was arrested in 1983 in Africa after the fall of the regime of Uganda dictator Idi Amin, whose government had given -j Processing waste paper A.

Process chemicals are added to the old paper to bleach out the colors and remove inks. B. The processed paper is blended together with water and agitated until it is broken down to a pulp. C. New paper is made from the pulp.

Fiber Supply Chicago said. The Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. in Washington reports headway in plastics recycling, which did not begin until around 1980. Plastics are not recycled in the sense of being returned to their original use. Discarded plastics usually are shredded for "fiberfiH" used in sleeping bags, jacket padding or for industrial strapping, carpet backing or paint brushes.

Municipal curbside recycling programs generally are aimed at single-to four-flat residential dwellings. him asylum. According to court records, the prosecutors in Branion's trial said the doctor left his job at the Scott Clinic, 5027 S. Prairie at around 11:30 a.m. on the day of the killing and drove immediately to his apartment at 5054 S.

WoodlawnAve. Once there, he struggled with his wife, retrieved a Walther PPK automatic that he had been given as a gift and shot her at least tour times, prosecutors charged. Key to the case was testimony by Michael Boyle, a Chicago police officer, that Branion could have driven from the clinic to his apartment in six minutes. "Mr. Tuite said Dr.

Branion had a locked-up alibi all the way up ta 1 1:30," attorney D'Amato said. But Branion insisted that after he left the clinic, he picked up and dressed his 4-year-old son at a nearby nursery school, then went to a friend's office to see if she still intended to keep a luncheon engagement with him and his wife. When he arrived home, he said, he discovered his wife's body, and he called police at 1 1:57 a.m. Branion's current lawyers said that his original attorneys erred because they never questioned whether he would have had enough 1.