To the Editor:
I encourage Dorchester voters to join me in voting Yes on 2 on Election Day because we have far too much litter in Dorchester and updating the Bottle Bill will help to address this issue.

As a community activist, I have spent several dozen hours working for a cleaner Dorchester, through organizing group walks to explore improvement opportunities, picking up litter on my own and with neighbors, and requesting and obtaining new sidewalk waste receptacles from the City of Boston. These efforts have helped make a difference, but updating the Bottle Bill will do even more.

Three decades ago the Bottle Bill drastically reduced the amount of littered soda and beer containers in our communities. By updating the Bottle Bill, there will be a deposit for on-the-go beverages including bottled water, sports drinks, and juice, which will give them a value they don’t currently have. It will provide an individual, personalized incentive to recycle. Eighty percent of containers that have a deposit are recycled, while only 23 percent of containers that do not have a deposit are recycled. Don’t buy into the misleading material the opposition has spent over $8 million to get on your TV screen morning, noon, and night.

The MA Department of Environmental Protection conducted a study, which found that there is no price difference between beverages that have a Bottle Bill and those that don’t. Furthermore, the Bottle Bill is meant to address on-the-go containers that end up in our gutters, on our sidewalks, in our parks, and in water bodies like the Neponset River and Boston Harbor.

So, whether communities have curbside recycling or not is really aside the point. Who do you trust? Big soda purely driven by profit or organizations like Mass Audubon, the Environmental League of Mass, the League of Women Voters, MASSPIRG, and the Sierra Club?

I trust the latter. Please join me in voting Yes on 2 on November 4.

-Erica Mattison
Dorchester