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CORALVILLE, Iowa -- Iowa, with its 38-year-old bottle bill, is one of the "rock stars of recycling," a champion of beverage container deposit laws told recyclers Tuesday.

"It ranks up there with motherhood and apple pie," Susan Collins of the Container Recycling Institute and a veteran of more than 25 years in the field said about a recent poll that found 88 percent of Iowa voters - regardless of political preference - support the law.

However, speaking at a panel discussion of the bottle bill at the Iowa Recycling Association conference in Coralville, she agreed with speakers from Iowa's grocer industry that it's time to modernize the bill.

Dustin Miller, a Des Moines lawyer who represents the Iowa Grocery Industry Association at the Capitol, noted that the bill was implemented the year he was born.

"I can assure you I look a lot different than I did in 1979 - at least that's what my mother tells me," Miller said.

The bottle bill established a 5-cent deposit on pop and beer containers as an incentive to recycle cans and bottles and reduce litter. There have been numerous legislative proposals to repeal, scale back or expand the law. None have been successful. That includes House File 575, which Michelle Hurd of the grocery association called a "great starting point."