PROVIDENCE — Witnesses for and against a bottle bill stated their cases on how to best handle the deluge of beverage containers consumed in Rhode Island during a packed 2½-hour committee hearing at the State House yesterday.

The bill would require a 5-cent charge on almost all beverage containers sold in the state including beer, wine, liquor, water, juice, milk and sports drinks, which would be redeemable at large retailers and state-run redemption centers.

Four state environmental groups and the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, the agency that runs the landfill, all testified in favor of the bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, saying it would significantly reduce litter across the state and save space in the landfill that is facing capacity in about 12 years.

Paiva Weed said the state has fallen short of the goals passed more than 15 years ago of a 70-percent recycling rate, one of the highest in the country.

“If you Googled it, it’s incredible. We were called leaders,” she said at the start of the Senate Environment and Agriculture Committee hearing. “Now we are at 15 percent. It’s embarrassing.”

The bottle bill was one of three pieces of legislation aimed to improve recycling in the state. Another mandates municipalities to outline plans to recycle 35 percent of their waste and requires large entities in the commercial sector to contract recycling services with haulers.

The last bill to be heard aims to divert more leaf and yard waste from Resource Recovery, which receives more than it can use, and encourage more tonnage to businesses to create compost.

All three bills were held for further study.

The bottle bill has been proposed and shot down several times in the General Assembly over the past few decades and proponents will have a battle this session as well.

Lined up in opposition at the hearing were beer and bottled water distributors, as well grocery and liquor store owners.

Bottlers argued that beverage containers consist of a small portion of the waste stream and improved curbside recycling is a better way to reduce waste sent to the landfill.

A representative for the American Beverage Association said that the initiative was inadequately financed and that other states have struggled to pay for their redemption laws.

The group said it favors increased recycling at the curb, but said that it has not invested in any programs in Rhode Island to accomplish that.

A lobbyist for the Rhode Island Food Dealers Association said large grocery stores were concerned about the effort that would go into hosting a redemption machine, likely in their parking lots, that would take up space and pose a safety issue by attracting bees in the summer.

The same lobbyist said small businesses, which would not be required to host redemption machines, were worried that customers who shop at their stores might patronize larger stores so they don’t have to make two trips to buy groceries and redeem their beverage containers.

Liquor store owners near the Massachusetts border said they feared going out of business because coupled with a 7-percent sales tax, the bottle bill would drive customers across the border to save a buck or two on a case of beer.

Massachusetts has a five-cent bottle redemption law, but no sales tax on liquor.

“I have heard that border stores in other states have closed down,” said Ernest Cerce of Pro’s Liquors in Woonsocket. “I would not want to see all my hard work go that way.”

Despite the concerns, supporters say the bottle bill works.

Matt Auten, an advocate for Environment Rhode Island, said return rates in bottle bill states versus non-bottle bills states are about two to three times higher, and since none of them have been revoked, businesses must have found a way to cope.

“We have not seen one bottle bill that has been put in place repealed –– not one,” Auten said. “States have found a way to make them work.”

Right now, Resource Recovery sees about one third of all the plastic bottles sold in the state, said RIRRC recycling manager Sarah Kite, and about 18 percent all aluminum cans.

In Massachusetts, the overall redemption rate is about 68 percent.

The committee also held another bill, which sought to expand the definition of incineration to include “an arrangement of chambers and equipment designed for burning, oxidation or thermal degradation of solid, semi-solid or gaseous combustible waste to a gas and residue.”

A representative for Jefferson Renewable Energy, based in Warwick, testified against the bill, saying that the proposed language would outlaw its proposal for a waste-to-energy gasification facility it has been pushing for at the Central Landfill.

The company is not seeking any special treatment or tax credits, said Richard Nicholson of Jefferson, it just wants the state to leave room to consider a gasification facility.

Resource Recovery’s executive director Michael O’Connell also opposed the expanded definition, wanting flexibility to think about all alternatives to burying the state’s waste.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Josh Miller, D-Providence, said that the bill needs work and wants to incorporate an emissions standard that such a facility would have to meet before being built.

ngarcia@projo.com