Scott Cawelti

3-14-13

Here's a great idea whose time never came.  How many other great ideas out there 
never saw light of day?  Cost, inconvenience, and other more important issues kept it 
from going anywhere, but what a shame.  

12-13-90

Now that the “me” and the “we” decades are over (the ‘70s and ‘80s), we’re headed for the deposit decade. That makes sense: It’s good for both me and we.

Consider the logic of deposits. Instead of just pleading with people to return “throwaway” items, reward them with money. Cash usually works whenever cajoling fails.

Deposit laws work so well, in fact, that they’re a threat to anyone who benefits from throwaways. Iowans who have lived her awhile will remember what a tough fight we had getting the bottle bill through. Bottling companies and grocers both said it would ruin them.

They also threatened much higher prices, putting liquids in cans and bottles out of reach of most consumers. That didn’t happen. The downside has been inconvenience for both drinkers and grocers. But nobody went bust.  

The upside? We all know: noticeably cleaner roadways, sidewalks and parks in those states (eight, I believe) with deposit laws.  Now there’s talk of a national bottle bill. It makes perfect sense, especially for travelers. (I’ve hauled more than a few Iowa nickel cans hundreds of miles just to avoid throwing them away.)

Bottlers and grocers nationwide, though, still oppose such a law, saying it will ruin them. We ought to know better by now; a national bottle and can deposit bill deserves support.

But there’s another deposit law in the works that makes just as much sense. “Click and Clack,” the Tappet Brothers (otherwise known as Tom and Ray Magliozzi and National Public Radio) endorsed this idea last Saturday afternoon.

Every year, Americans dump waste oil by the ton down sewers and drains or on the ground. Several Exxon Valdez’s worth, in fact, and the gunk pollutes groundwater and sewer systems wherever it seeps. It’s becoming a national problem. What to do?

Here’s the proposal, according to Click and Clack: Place four dollars deposit on every new can of oil. Five quarts of oil would cost $20 plus the price of the oil. If it’s returned as used oil, it only costs the price of the oil. If it’s not, the money goes into a groundwater clean-up fund.

There would be at least three happy consequences of this law.

First, people would feel obliged to consider selling their old oil-burning cars. No more just dumping in a quart of two every hundred miles or so.

 Second, within a couple of years, there would be a decent fortune set aside to help pay the enormous costs of groundwater clean-up.

Third, of course, almost no one would dump oil anywhere, since the reward for returning it would be so high. (In fact, oil pan tampering might become a new problem.)

I’ll tell you who else would benefit from this law: oil-changing outlets. They would only have to charge for the oil, since they would immediately recycle it. Former do-it-yourselfers would turn to these places just to avoid the trouble of having to save and return every drop.
 
It’s a fine idea, and puts me in mind of other deposit possibilities. All throwaways are candidates for deposits. How about a nickel on all newspapers and magazines? A dime on all cardboard boxes? Fifty cents on all plastic containers? A hundred bucks on all appliances?

No one can call a deposit on throwaways unfair, since the deposit comes back to returners and savers. It’s only unfair to those who persist in throwing stuff away. And anything that’s unfair to them is fair for the rest of us.

Let’s get started; a serious oil deposit law makes more sense every day.

12-16-90

“Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder,” they say, or is it absence? Or maybe both?

Even with a fond heart, it’s better to wait to have sex. That’s the message of a group in Waterloo that is now urging what they call an “abstinence-based curriculum.” I think it’s a great idea.

Great ideas, though, don’t always work in practice. Can abstinence ever work in reality for teenagers? I think it can, given three conditions:

First, there have to be plenty of teenagers who support it. And I mean nearly all. Peer pressure has long been the meanest bully in high school. If peer pressure says, “Hey, sex makes you smile for days — never mind what the old fogies say,” abstinence won’t fly.

All the “Just Say No” posters in the world — referring to either sex or drugs — can’t fight what friends say. Don’t believe that? List the number of dumb things you did in high school because some cool group made you think it was great. How many of us began smoking that way? And if anything deserves an abstinence rule, it’s smoking.

Driving like idiots is another. I personally know half-dozen kids, me among them, who were nearly killed on city streets in our cars because we wanted to show what cool drivers we were.

If there would be a school in Waterloo or Cedar Falls where all the abstainers could attend for four years, an abstinence-based curriculum might work at that school. – if the next two conditions are also met.

Second, enforcement. Abstinence is one of those rules that’s fairly easy to break with impunity until it’s too late. There’s nothing to detect on the breath, no odd behavior, no dilated pupils. An occasional dreamy look is about the only symptom. The culprits just take long walks together occasionally or go to the mall on a Sunday afternoon for three hours.

The only guarantee that they’re abstaining is their promise to abstain. Let those who have never broken a promise believe this will work.

The other enforcement possibility might be a modern version of chastity belts. Maybe someone can design a high-tech lower-body belt that screeches when touched. The problem with chastity belts is that anyone who wants one probably doesn’t need it, and anyone who doesn’t will find a way to get out of it.

Still, if someone can think of a reasonable way of enforcing chastity, abstinence might work.

Finally, adults need to provide abstinence models. If we want teenagers to abstain, we have to be willing to show them how wonderful abstinence can be. If parents can’t abstain occasionally, why should they expect it of their glandular children? Even if parents can abstain from sex — some find sex repulsive, or dull, or both — how about abstaining from anything they find enjoyable?

How about taking a month or two off from watching television? That would be the equivalent of sexual abstinence for some adults. Or a few weeks of getting along without a car, opting for carpooling or busing instead? There are plenty of small pleasures to abstain from, and this would demonstrate that we’re not asking teenagers to do anything that we wouldn’t or didn’t do.

Make no mistake. I still think abstinence is a great idea. As long as we eliminate peer pressure, find some way to enforce it, and provide models of abstinence ourselves, it will work.