File this under "No good deed goes unpunished."

Taking your old wine, liquor and other glass bottles to the recycling center does two things: It removes the glass from the waste stream and it causes the city to lose money.

You may feel good about helping the environment, but giving it to the city means it will have less money. And that could result in you paying more for wine and spirits.

Since 1994, importers of glass bottles have had to pay the state 1.5 cents per bottle. The biggest payers are those firms bringing in wine and liquor. The state gives the money to the counties for recycling programs.

The Tax Foundation of Hawaii estimates liquor distributors last year brought in 28 million glass containers, generating about $420,000 in fees.

The state and the counties want the tax on so-called "non-deposit glass containers" raised by between 200 and 400 percent, going from 1.5 cents to either 3 cents or 6 cents, depending on the size of the glass container.

The bill before the House, Senate Bill 1131, was requested by the Abercrombie administration because the city and the counties were losing money on the recycling program. The program is separate from the 5 cents you get back for recycling plastic, glass and metal cans.

"The cost to ship glass to West Coast facilities to be remanufactured into new glass containers exceeds the market value of the glass," said Lori Kahikina, city director of environmental services in testimony. Honolulu’s various mayors — Mufi Hannemann, Peter Carlisle and Kirk Caldwell — would not make it on Donald Trump’s "Apprentice" television show if they used the glass recycling program to prove they know how to run Honolulu Hale like a business.

The city and the counties had been paying people to bring in old bottles to get a 4 cent-a-pound reward. But then in 2010 and 2012, the Legislature raided the bottle fund when it needed money to help balance the state budget. The state couldn’t give money to the counties, so the city dropped the reward from 4 cents to a penny a pound.

Even then the Tax Foundation noted in a research paper on the issue that in 2011 the bottle fund, called the Advance Disposal Fee, paid out more money to the counties than the fund generated.

So the state is giving the counties more than they collect for the program of buying back old glass. And then the counties are losing money because it costs more in shipping than they get selling the glass on the West Coast.

It is a textbook example of "buy high, sell low."

Lobbyists, as expected, say that increased taxes will be passed on to the consumers and environmentalists argue that new tax money will go for recycling projects.

"Without a study of the overall fiscal situation of the program and glass recycling goals, it is impossible to gauge whether this significant fee increase is warranted. We question if there are adequate cost controls in this program, if every time a county decides to pay more to recyclers there is a corresponding request to increase the fee to cover the costs," said Katie Jocoy, Western counsel for the Wine Institute.

The one certainty in this debate is that at the end of the line is a consumer, not a business, who will be paying the tax.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.