Environmentalism is a broad subject encompassing many varied areas, including the prevention of pollution, conservation of nature and open spaces, sustainable development, and the handling of waste. The management of these and related issues is complex and multidisciplinary. For instance, the treatment of air pollution combines such separate areas as transportation, infrastructure, and health. It demands long-range vision, since certain environmental hazards will mostly affect future generations. The problem of conserving open spaces, for example, necessitates weighing the short-term benefit of exploiting the land in question against the future benefit to be gained from it in coming generations. In addition, environmental issues are difficult to handle due to pressure from polluting companies uninterested in investing resources to prevent damage to the environment—pressure that can open the door to government corruption.
In order to shape a suitable strategy on environmental issues, the Cabinet, with the approval of the Knesset, must formulate a policy based on professional data. The policy must be implemented by enacting laws and regulations and by enforcing this legislation under the supervision of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. As a final step, feedback should be obtained on the progress being achieved to aid in drawing up future policies.
In practice, however, not enough existing data is being used. The Cabinet, partly due to shortsightedness stemming from the high turnover rate, has not formulated a comprehensive policy on environmental matters, and Cabinet decisions in this area have been few and far between. Implementation of these decisions has been lacking, and the Ministry of Environmental Protection has been unsuccessful in its efforts at legislation and enforcement. Feedback from the State Comptroller and environmental organizations has not had a significant impact on decision-makers.
The Deposit Law on Beverage Containers as a Case Study
A classic example of the difficulties in setting policy on environmental issues is the process of enacting the Deposit Law on Beverage Containers. The Deposit Law is one of the first laws in Israel to include the "polluter pays" principle, according to which the polluting party bears the cost of the damage it has done to the environment. The Law sets a deposit of 25 Israeli agorot (approx. 6 U.S. cents) per bottle or other beverage container, to be reimbursed when the consumer returns the empty container. Consequently, the consumer has a choice of throwing away the container and losing the deposit, or returning it to the point of sale (from where it is sent for recycling) and getting back the deposit.
Although the Deposit Law relates to the environment, it was submitted as a private members' bill without the backing of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The Ministry chose to promote a different piece of legislation, the Packaging Law, whose aim was to address all types of packaging. In practice, the Packaging Law has not been passed in the Knesset as of this writing (September 2007), while the Ministry has retroactively "adopted" the Deposit Law and is now helping to expand it.
The process of enacting the Deposit Law on Beverage Containers has been particularly lengthy, and in fact has not yet been completed, since beverage containers of 1.5 liters and over are still not covered by the Law. The legislation was initiated during the 13th Knesset, in 1992, as a bill submitted by Knesset members Avraham Poraz, Dedi Zucker, Eliezer ("Modi") Zandberg, and Marina Solodkin. It passed in the preliminary reading, but did not have the necessary continuity due to postponements resulting from pressure by interested parties. For this reason, when the 14th Knesset went into session, the bill's supporters were forced to begin their efforts all over again. The bill was passed on its third and final reading in the Knesset only in April 1999, but this did not mean an end to the delays. The implementation of the Law was postponed four times, until it finally went into effect in October 2001. After the Law was put into practice, it encountered additional difficulties, and today the actual rate of collection of beverage containers stands at 65% as opposed to the target of 85% stipulated in the Law.
Throughout the legislative process, the Deposit Law ran into opposition from the following parties with vested interests:
- Beverage manufacturers opposed the Law, apparently out of fear that their earnings would be harmed as the result of reduced demand.
- The haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Knesset members were against including bottles of 1.5 liters and over in the Law, based on the argument that this would create undue hardship for large families.
- Grocery store owners opposed the returning of beverage containers, apparently since the Law did not include mechanisms to help them deal with the burden of collecting the bottles.
In the case of a private bill without government backing, it is difficult to fight vested interests for the good of the public. As a result, the scope of the bill was reduced: bottles of 1.5 liter were stricken from the Law along with plastic jugs of milk (for reasons of hygiene or due to pressures by interested parties); businesses with an area of less than 28 square meters were not required to return deposits; and the deposit was set at 25 agorot, a relatively low rate that does not offer sufficient incentive to return the drink containers.
As stated, work on the Deposit Law is not yet over, and a new bill is presently being debated in the Knesset that seeks to expand the Law to include 1.5 liter bottles. While the new bill was originally a private member's bill submitted by MK Avshalom Vilan, this time around it benefited from government support and was passed on its first reading. The Ministry of Environmental Protection is helping with the legislative process, and it seems that the government is today more prepared to address environmental concerns.
Yaniv Reingwertz is a doctoral student of economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a research assistant at the Israel Democracy Institute. He has written a professional assessment of the Deposit Law on Beverage Containers for the Forum for the Deposit Law.