Bottle Bill gets canned for this session, may be recycled next year

Re-vamping Iowa’s “bottle bill” isn’t in the cards, according to a key legislator. A bill making dramatic changes in Iowa’s nickel deposit law cleared a House Committee yesterday, but House Speaker Brent Siegrist says that’s where the road ends.Siegrist, a republican from Council Bluffs, says environmentalists are pushing to have more drink containers covered by the deposit law.Grocery store owners lobbied for a new, statewide recycling system to get the empties out of their stores. Siegrist says they haven’t been able to find a middle ground yet.Siegrist says “bottle bill” backers and grocery store owners should get together over the summer to come up with a compromise. However, a similar work-group met twice last year without coming up with an agreement.