About 75 percent of people who live in US states with "bottle bills'' approve of the litter reduction method.

And eight out of ten Canadian provinces report significant reductions in litter and cleaner communities following the introduction of bottle laws.

Those were some of the points made by Ms Pat Franklin at the Annual General Meeting of Keep Bermuda Beautiful at Peace Lutheran Church in Paget last night.

Ms Franklin is executive director of the US-based Container Recycling Institute -- a small Arlington, Virginia, clearing house and resource centre for information about container deposit programmes in North America.

Ms Franklin acknowledged that no new deposit laws had been written in the last ten years.

"I can remember when MacDonald's claimed one million hamburgers had been sold,'' she said. "There has been a explosion in a variety of packaging since then.'' Ms Franklin attributed this to a "throwaway culture'' that clung to the concept of disposable aluminium cans and plastic bottles.

"Oregon felt that if there was a deposit programme as one way to go, a container would have an intrinsic value and wouldn't be discarded,'' she said.

She also noted states with bottle laws were often surrounded by others without them. This led to residual litter and trash.

"We must recognise there is a cost whichever way you cut it,'' she said.

"Currently the cost of collecting is born by the local government through trash or recycling pick-up.'' Representatives of local bottling companies and retailers were in attendance, as was J. Preston Read of the National Soft Drink Association of Washington D.C.

Scott Kitson was re-elected President of KBB and Greg Wojciehowski remains vice-president.

Rock Watchers, ironically the division of KBB that oversees roadside and water clean up of bottles and other litter, elected John Buckley as chairman.