The state Senate last week unanimously passed four recycling bills targeted at reducing waste dumped at the Central Landfill, specifically household trash, leaf and yard waste, and electronics laden with hazardous materials.

All of the bills are awaiting consideration in the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee, except the electronic-waste bill, which has been sent to the House Finance Committee.

Rep. Jan Malik, D-Warren, chairman of the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee, said the three recycling bills could be heard at the next committee meeting as early as Thursday.

He said he tentatively supports the recycling bills as they passed the Senate, but wants to make sure that any recycling mandates do not put an undue burden on businesses.

Some of the changes that the bills outline include making cities and towns submit plans to the state to meet a 35-percent recycling goal, making recycling mandatory for businesses with 50 or more employees and banning the disposal of yard waste at the Central Landfill, which already has too much material. The Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, the independent state agency that runs the landfill, hopes businesses will be able to accept the material and make better use of it by making compost.

The Senate e-waste bill, which requires electronics manufacturers to take back and recycle household electronics products, will join a similar House version in the House Finance Committee.

Although environmentalists applauded the Senate for passing the recycling package, a bottle redemption program failed to make it out of Senate committee negotiations.

The so-called bottle bill passed the Senate without language that would lead to implementation and was reduced to a study bill for the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation.

The bill stalled in the Senate Environment and Agriculture Committee after concerns about how, and at what cost, the state would run a bottle collection program and the economic impact a bottle redemption law would have on liquor stores near the Massachusetts border.

Several Rhode Island liquor store owners testified at a committee hearing, voicing fears that they would lose business to their Bay State competitors, who are subject to a bottle bill but no sales tax on alcohol.

Even though a bottle redemption program did not make it through the Senate, it’s still alive in the House, but with little chance to become law this year.

A bill with language similar to the original Senate bill was introduced in the Environment and Natural Resources Committee in May by Rep. Donna Walsh, D-Charlestown. It retains the 5-cent redeemable deposit on beverage containers.

Walsh said she will probably amend her bill to mirror the current Senate version. This year’s bottle-bill attempts are among many to come through the State House over the years, to fail yet again.

“I guess something is better than nothing,” Walsh said of the study that would be assigned to Resource Recovery. “A lot of times that’s the way things work in the legislature.”

Rhode Island and New Hampshire are the only states in New England that do not have a bottle redemption program. Connecticut and Massachusetts lawmakers are looking to expand their states’ collection systems, which do not include bottled water and sport drinks.

In other action, the Senate unanimously passed a water bill sponsored by Sen. Susan Sosnowski, D-North Kingstown, who has spent three years drafting legislation to speed the permitting process to dig new wells and limit water use in the summer.

The bill, now awaiting consideration in the House with a companion bill sponsored by Malik, allows water suppliers to create conservation pricing to conserve water in the summer and calls for the creation of a water systems development board, which would streamline the application process for water supply projects. The board would be made up of representatives of relevant state agencies, such as the Department of Environmental Management and state Department of Health.

ngarcia@projo.com