A proposal to raise the fee distributors pay for the recycling of nondeposit glass containers appears to have stalled in the state Legislature, leaving the collection of those bottles in limbo for another year.

The problem is that the 1.5-cents-per-container fee for wine bottles and other glass containers not included in the HI-5 beverage container program doesn’t come close to covering the cost of recycling, officials said.

"Without adequate support the market is going to collapse," warned Suzanne Jones, Hono­lulu recycling coordinator.

The state collects nearly $1 million annually from the advance disposal fee for nondeposit bottles and distributes 90 percent of it to the counties, which pay companies to recycle the containers. However, there isn’t much use for that type of glass in Hawaii, so it is shipped to the mainland at considerable expense, officials said.

The counties typically exhaust these funds by the third quarter of the fiscal year and must either expend their own funds for glass recycling or stop paying for the service, resulting in those bottles being diverted to the landfill, officials said.

A bill to raise the fee as part of Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s legislative package, Senate Bill 1131, was approved by Senate committees last year but didn’t make it out of the House. This year a similar bill, SB 2931, was approved in January by the Senate Energy and Environment Committee, but it didn’t earn a hearing in the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

State Sen. David Ige (D, Pearl Harbor-Pearl City-Aiea), Ways and Means Committee chairman, who voted in favor of last year’s fee-increase legislation, said he decided to not schedule the bill in part because of controversy over how much the fee should be and the fact that the legislative auditor expressed concerns about flaws in the HI-5 recycling program. The auditor’s office released two reports last year that pointed to lax oversight and other deficiencies that undermine the integrity of the fee handling.

But Darren Park, coordinator of the state Office of Solid Waste Management, said the HI-5 program and the advance disposal fee are two distinct programs that should be evaluated separately.

"One-and-a-half cents per container is definitely insufficient," he said, noting that the fee has not been increased since it was established in 1994.

Under the legislation, the smallest bottles, such as perfume bottles, would be charged only 1 cent per container. Medium-size bottles would be charged 3 cents, and wine-size bottles would be charged 5 cents.

In testimony before the Energy and Environment Committee, foes objected to the size of the new fee, among other things.

Lauren Zirbel, executive director of the Hawaii Food Industry Association, said some of the beverages covered by the fee are already taxed enough.

"For certain beverages, up to 25 percent of the price consumers pay goes to taxes and fees for the state, and if you include federal requirements it can be around 50 percent of the cost," Zirbel said. "Adding this additional fee will cause the price of these already heavily taxed items to go up even more."

Katie Jacoy, a representative of the Washington state-based Wine Institute, said the new fee likely would increase the cost of wine for Hawaii consumers.

Jones, meanwhile, said didn’t think the new fee would be much of a burden.

"I can’t imagine customers would notice 5 cents added to a bottle of wine or gin," she said.

On Maui, where 1,800 tons of nondeposit glass was collected last year, funds from the advance disposal fee ran out for the year last week, said Kyle Ginoza, director of the Maui Department of Environmental Management.

He said the state granted Maui permission to send the nondeposit containers to the landfill until more money becomes available.

"We’ve been pleading to get more money," Ginoza said, "because we’re just going to run into the same situation next year."

On Oahu, bars and restaurants are required to recycle bottles holding wine, spirits and other beverages, and the island recycles 6,000 tons of nondeposit glass each year, officials said.

Jones said her department has enough money in a special reserve fund to collect nondeposit glass for another year. But after that those bottles, at some point, will likely go back into the waste stream.

"I hate to go backwards," she said. "We’ve got the most to lose."