Saturday, February 15, 2020

Slow Saturday Slice of Toast

"Toast scores $400m funding boost" by Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff, February 14, 2020

Toast, a Boston-based maker of software for the restaurant industry, has raised an additional $400 million in venture funding.The new shares were sold at a price that values the company at $4.9 billion, Toast said.

Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, along with TPG, Greenoaks Capital, and Tiger Global Management. The latest round brings Toast’s total funding to more than $900 million.

Toast, with 2,700 employees, is a leading maker of software that restaurant operators use to manage customer orders, loyalty programs, inventory and payroll.. Toast also offers a number of hardware products, including the point-of-sale tablets and handheld order-taking devices for waitstaff that diners now commonly see in so many food establishments.

“We’ve been growing the business incredibly fast and we have lots of new products," said chief executive Aman Narang, who added that Toast will use the additional funding to “double down on what we’re already doing."

This will include investments in new hardware and software products, including financial services to assist restaurants in need of additional financing.....

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Look who got burnt:

"Michael Avenatti is convicted of trying to extort Nike" by Larry Neumeister Associated Press, February 14, 2020

NEW YORK — Michael Avenatti, the combative lawyer who gained fame by representing a porn star in lawsuits involving President Trump, was convicted Friday of trying to extort sportswear giant Nike.

The verdict was returned Friday by a federal jury in Manhattan following a three-week trial. Avenatti glared at the jurors as the verdict was being announced but said nothing.

Afterward, he shook hands with his lawyers and told them “great job,’’ before he was led back to the cell where he has been held since a judge found he had violated his bail conditions. His lawyer, Scott Srebnick, declined to comment but said he would appeal the conviction.

Avenatti, 48, became a cable news fixture in 2018 and 2019 as journalists courted him for information about porn star Stormy Daniels and her claims of a Trump tryst before he became president, and a payoff to remain silent about it. At his peak of notoriety, Avenatti used Twitter and TV appearances to relentlessly criticize Trump and even considered running for president himself, but Avenatti’s fall was swift. He was arrested as he was about to meet Nike lawyers last March to press his demands for millions of dollars to conduct an internal probe of the apparel maker.

Avenatti maintained he was taking the aggressive position at the urging of his client, Gary Franklin, who ran a youth basketball league in Los Angeles and was angry that Nike ended a decadelong sponsorship that provided $72,000 annually and free gear.

Avenatti did not testify, but his lawyers said he was following the wishes of Franklin and an entertainment executive who advised him to be aggressive to force Nike to fire corrupt executives and fix its culture.....

Uh-huh. It was all altrui$tic and not a $cummy $hakedown.

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Here is something to go with your frozen yogurt:

"Facebook reverses on paid influencers after Bloomberg memes" by Barbara Ortutay and Amanda Seitz Associated Press, February 14, 2020

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook has decided to let political campaigns pay online influencers to spread their messages, a practice that had sidestepped many of the social network’s rules governing political ads.

Why not? It's a two-tiered society anyway.

Friday’s policy reversal highlights difficulties that tech companies and regulators have in keeping up with the changing nature of paid political messages.

Oh, the poor propagandists and thought police!

The change comes days after Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg exploited a loophole to run humorous messages promoting his campaign on the accounts of popular Instagram personalities followed by millions of younger people.

Already cheating, huh?

The Bloomberg posts weren’t much more than self-deprecating humor used to sell the candidate’s old-guy appeal, using a tactic that until now was largely used to sell skin care products or clothing-subscription services, but the lack of oversight and clear rules around influencer marketing, not to mention their effectiveness in reaching younger audiences, makes them ripe for misuse.

Bloomberg’s effort skirted many of the rules that tech companies have imposed on political ads to safeguard US elections from malicious foreign and domestic interference and misinformation. Online political ads have been controversial, especially after it was revealed Russia used them in an attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election. In response, Facebook has rolled out a number of rules to prevent a repeat of that, though it has declined to fact-check political ads and refuses to ban even blatantly false messages from politicians.

Yeah, the politicians can lie with impunity along with the pre$$ narrative regarding Russian interference being promoted.

Before the explosion of social media, it was clearer what’s an ad and what isn’t — and thus what’s subject to disclosures and other rules. With social media, a campaign can pay celebrities and other influential users to spread a message on their behalf, without ever buying an ad and be subject to its rules.

They think that is going to win them votes?

“This is a new kind of activity that simply didn’t exist when the rules for Internet political communications were last updated,” said Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission.  

A Jew is in charge of the FEC?

Friday’s policy change involves what Facebook calls “branded content,” sponsored items posted by ordinary users who are typically paid by companies or organizations. Advertisers pay the influential users directly to post about their brand.

Facebook doesn’t make money directly from such posts and doesn’t consider them advertising. As a result, branded content wasn’t governed by Facebook’s advertising policies, which require candidates and campaigns to verify their identity with a US ID or mailing address and disclose how much they spent running each ad.

Until Friday, Facebook tried to deter campaigns from using such branded content by barring them from using a tool designed to help advertisers run such posts on Facebook and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. The rule change now allows campaigns in the United States to use this tool, provided they’ve been authorized by Facebook to run political ads and disclose who paid for the sponsored posts. Campaigns that avoid using the tool, as Bloomberg had, risk having their accounts suspended.

I'm sure he will get a pass on that.

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Related: Why Is Bloomberg's Long History of Egregious Sexism Getting a Pass?

At least Fox has refused to run his ads.

Too bad we aren't France
:

"Sex tapes sink Macron’s candidate, spark outrage in France" by Associated Press, February 14, 2020

PARIS — Rivals from across France’s political spectrum joined in a chorus of alarm and dismay Friday and warned that French democracy is in danger after an online leak of graphic sexual images led an associate of President Emmanuel Macron to pull out of the race for mayor of Paris.

Rapid expressions of support for Benjamin Griveaux were a striking reminder of the longstanding and widely held view in France that public servants’ private lives are largely off limits, especially what they do in private settings with consenting adults.

Maybe it should have been that way one day, but in light of Bill Clinton, Epstein, and the rest, not anymore.

A Russian performance artist who accused Griveaux of lying to Paris voters and “big hypocrisy” claimed responsibility for sexually explicit posts that apparently prompted the candidate to end his bid for City Hall.

Politicians warned that using sex to shame a public figure represented an Americanization of French politics, a shift toward more puritanical standards.

WTF are they talking about? The U.S. is awash in moral turpitude.

So what are the French saying, you can't use perversion or pedophelia against a public figure?

“We’re a country with 2,000 years of history of buttocks and wantonness,’’ said Julien Aubert, a lawmaker from the rival Republicans party, in an interview. “A line has been crossed through social media, because no French media would ever have published this.’’

Others warned that people will no longer want to stand for elected office if they run the risk of their private affairs becoming public, and that the leaking of sexually explicit material to take Griveaux out of next month’s municipal elections was a threat to France’s proud democratic traditions.

Well, they probably shouldn't be in "public service" anyway!

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called for “respect for the private lives of people and of families” and said the affair “isn’t worthy of the democratic debate.”

A grim-faced Griveaux announced the withdrawal himself on Friday morning, saying he’d been targeted by “vile attacks.”

“My family doesn’t deserve this,” he said.....

Yeah, he's the victim.

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Better be careful. The criticism could be interpreted as hate speech. Might need to move to Britain to speak freely.

Related
: Weinstein saw victims as ‘complete disposables’

Prosecutors say he treated them like underwear as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. shot reporters a thumbs up.

"Victoria’s Secret is out; women want comfortable underwear that fits" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, February 14, 2020

On a recent day off from school, teenagers Ellie Sung and Isabella Mas were wandering the Copley Place mall. As she paused for a break, Sung took out her phone and began searching for bras online — ignoring the Victoria’s Secret store a few feet away.

Sung, 15, is just not a fan of the brand, which she said doesn’t reflect her values. “I know they’re transphobic and not inclusive,” she said, echoing a prevailing criticism of the retail giant. “If young girls are shopping, they need to see every body type.”

Young women like Sung have helped upend Victoria’s Secret’s status as the lingerie industry’s juggernaut. The company once synonymous with sexy is now seen by many as passé, out of step with what modern women seem to want: comfortable bras and underwear that fit properly on a range of body types. Its parent company, L Brands, has seen its stock sag 75 percent since 2015 as it’s faced a litany of troubles, including investigations into chief executive Lex Wexner’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and a scathing report this month from The New York Times alleging its executives created a “culture of misogyny, bullying, and harassment.” According to CNBC, a possible sale of the company could happen soon.

Well, you can see right through that, can't you?

Epstein runs a honey pot blackmail operation that ensnares the powerful while dressing the girls up in lingerie from Victoria's Secrets. Sick.

The chaos at Victoria’s Secret has been a boon for new entrants into the $11.9 billion intimate apparel category, and local retailers and lingerie designers are now eager to steal their share of the underwear drawer.

The Globe has no clothes!

Lisa Mullan, who in a previous life helped usher HubSpot through its IPO, got her start making “beautiful, functional” silk undies because she didn’t want to choose between style and comfort. The cofounder of Uwila Warrior now sells her underwear on Neiman Marcus and Free People websites and in her store on Charles Street in Beacon Hill.

“I have young kids and I’m working,” she said. “I don’t need underwear that is giving me a wedgie.”

Local lingerie purveyors say they are seeing a lift in part thanks to the blitz of Instagram ads from direct-to-consumer brands like ThirdLove, Lively, and Cuup that use algorithms, quizzes, and “fit therapists” to help women find their perfect size. They also point to the messaging of brands like American Eagle’s Aerie and Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty, which feature full-figured women on full display.

Meredith Amenkhienan and Rachel Wentworth, owners of the Forty Winks boutique in Harvard Square, will celebrate a decade in the lingerie business in April, and say they had their strongest year in 2019. The “better fit” messaging that ThirdLove promotes is actually driving shoppers into their store. You can’t get one-on-one fittings when you’re getting a bra in the mail, Amenkhienan joked.

“It’s good for the industry, it’s pushing a lot of people to rethink what lingerie means,” she said. “But we have had customers who come in who tried ThirdLove and it didn’t work for them. They want to come in and touch and feel. It’s helping us.”

Now in her 40s, Lauren Beitelspacher, a marketing professor at Babson College, said she used to be the target audience for Victoria’s Secret. “But I’ve gotten older, and it hasn’t gotten older with me," she said. "I don’t want to shop there anymore, and the younger generation doesn’t want to shop there because they don’t want the things that it stands for.”

The prospect of receiving a frilly, lacy little number for Valentine’s Day doesn’t jibe with the current cultural climate, Beitelspacher said. Customers are less concerned with the male gaze, she said, and are instead responding to marketing messages promoting self-love and empowerment.

“I don’t see it as being a gift that people want to give anymore,” she said. “My husband is not going to buy that for me, I want to buy it myself.”

Victoria’s Secret just "didn’t change with the times,” said James West, who’s worked as a Boston-based lingerie salesman since the ’80s and now represents several European brands. Other lingerie brands like Chantelle and Cosabella have proven more nimble, and are increasingly pushing T-shirt bras, wireless bralettes, and larger cup sizes.

“Most of the US brands used to go to a triple D — most of them now are going G and H cups,” he said. “Women want to be comfortable.”

Younger shoppers are seeking out American Eagle’s Aerie line for bras, panties, and sleepwear. The company’s #AerieREAL campaign ads feature a full spectrum of body types and use unaltered photos of models like athlete Aly Raisman and actress Busy Philipps.

Noelle Scarlett, 24, who works as an associate at Wayfair, said she’s been shopping at Aerie since she was a teen. Their ads “have really authentic, beautiful women of all different shapes and sizes," she said, and their garments are both cute and comfortable.

“I don’t want things that are wedged up there,” she joked.

Does she still have a job?

When she thinks of Victoria’s Secret, said Scarlett, it’s all “thin bombshell models with angel wings.” Even if they are taking steps to be more inclusive, she said, “they don’t showcase it.”

The Globe then goes shopping with Masha Titova at Rebecca Minkoff’s SoHo store.

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What stinks?

"New disposable smart diaper sends caregiver’s phone a message when a change is needed" by Caroline Enos Globe Correspondent, February 14, 2020

A new smart diaper developed by researchers at MIT can send a message to parents via their smartphones or computers to let them know when their bundle of joy needs a change.

A small moisture sensor in the diaper contains a radio frequency identification tag, which transmits a radio signal to a nearby receiver when the diaper becomes wet. The receiver, which must be located within about three feet of the diaper, then notifies caregivers of the dirty diaper.

“This could prevent rashes and some infections like urinary tract infections, in both aging and infant populations,” said Sai Nithin R. Kantareddy, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and a collaborator on the project, in a university statement.

Researchers said the diaper could be especially helpful for nurses in neonatal units, or those who care for adults who use diapers. The study was published in the journal IEEE Sensors.

“Diapers are used not just for babies, but for aging populations, or patients who are bedridden and unable to take care of themselves,” said Pankhuri Sen, a research assistant in MIT’s Auto ID Laboratory, in the statement. “It would be convenient in these cases for a caregiver to be notified that a patient, particularly in a multibed hospital, needs changing.”

The sensor so far only indicates when a person has urinated. A university spokeswoman said researchers hope to improve the sensor at some point so it detects — ahem — solids. This is not the first smart diaper that has been developed. However, the MIT researchers say theirs is the best.....

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This next article will make you shit your pants:

"A man took a woman on a first date and robbed a bank in the process. Now he’s in prison" by John R. Ellement Globe Staff, February 14, 2020

It wasn’t the wine he was drinking that afternoon as he rode in the front seat of her car on their first date back in 2016 that apparently gave her pause about the match. It wasn’t even his abrupt request to stop at a bank in North Attleborough.

The moment when prosecutors said she began to wonder about Christopher Castillo, the Rhode Island man she met on a dating app, came when he ran from the bank toward her Nissan Maxima "sweating and carrying the hat, sunglasses, a gun, and cash.”

He gave the panicked woman an order — “[Expletive] go!"

Frightened by the gun, the sudden infusion of cash, and the sweaty man in her car, the woman drove away, but only until she saw the blue lights of pursuing police cars behind her. She pulled into the parking lot of a Dunkin’ and got out of the car, allowing police to pull Castillo out and arrest him for armed robbery at the bank, along with other charges, including assault and battery on a police officer.

According to prosecutors, Castillo went into the bank on that December afternoon, pulled back his jacket to reveal a pistol -- an antique .44 caliber weapon owned by a relative -- and demanded $1,000 cash from the teller, who obliged.....

Said he was going to use the money to buy drugs.

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Maybe she should have taken the T to meet him:

"The T asked people to share some transit love on Valentine’s Day. The responses were heartbreaking; The request for appreciation was for an online competition launched on Twitter Friday" by Steve Annear Globe Staff, February 14, 2020

When the MBTA launched a Valentine’s Day contest that asked riders to share videos expressing the reasons they love a particular bus stop, train station or neighborhood, some customers wondered if it was actually April Fool’s Day instead.

Here is how late the train is?

“This Valentine’s Day, we want to know what you love about your MBTA stop, dock, or station & the neighborhood it serves,” the T said in a tweet promoting the contest, called Next Stop: The World. “Make a video, 60 seconds or less, and share it on Twitter for your chance to win.”

In a statement Friday, Andrew Cassidy, the T’s director of social media, said while “we still have a lot we need to improve on to provide our riders with the transit experience they deserve,” the contest is meant to infuse positivity into the transit experience, and highlight the communities the T passes through.

He said they “expect a level of skepticism and negativity to come with what we produce, especially on social media,” but they don’t let that stop them from looking at new ways to engage with customers.

“We’re putting humanity back in the T," he said. “We truthfully care about our riders and take their issues to heart."

These guys are so full of themselves and tone deaf it defies words. Give yourselves another pat on the back despite the decrepit service and neglected maintenance, etc, etc.

For those without a cold heart, there’s still time to enter a legitimate submission to the contest. The deadline for the competition is Feb. 28. Officials from the MBTA said the winner will be picked by a 3-judge panel chosen by the transit agency. The judges will be looking for “originality and creativity” rather than high-quality production.

Well, I guess we know who the Globe rides with! Let's hope the car doesn't derail.

According to the official rules, participants are encouraged to take video of "the people, or a local restaurant, library, park, or special event” in their community, and the MBTA bus route, subway, trolley, train, ferry, or station that gets them there. Once finished, they should upload it to Twitter using the hashtag #NextStopTheWorld.

The winning contestant will be notified via direct message, on Twitter, in mid-March, according to a special website set up for the contest.

“We’re very much looking forward to seeing the videos our riders produce and learning more about their communities,” Cassidy said.

The competition promises the person with the best submission a pair of roundtrip plane tickets on a JetBlue flight to any city that the airliner travels to.

While they were clearly looking for positive content from passengers, what the T received from some of its 339,000 followers was something else entirely: a heaping helping of chocolate-covered snark.....

That was when the train came to a sudden stop!

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Related:

"It was a Valentine’s Day story for the ages, a tale both bizarre and tantalizing, and everyone was talking about it. On Feb. 14, 1895, a wealthy Massachusetts widow caused an uproar and made national headlines because she was married to a man less than half her age. She was 50, he was 21. Newspapers across the country — including The Boston Globe — ran the unfortunate tale of Mary S. Breckenridge’s scandalous relationship....."

The chemistry was perfect, and can you imagine the tales she told?

"Senate President Spilka wants to focus on housing, transportation" by Chris Lisinski and Michael P. Norton State House News Service, February 14, 2020

Up next on Senate President Karen Spilka’s agenda after passing major mental health access and carbon pricing bills: “comprehensive” housing legislation, transportation policy, and one — or maybe two — more health care packages.

While she did not specify the order in which the bills would be taken up or a timeline, Spilka outlined those three topics as the next priorities for the Senate this legislative session following Thursday’s passage of legislation to improve mental health care access.

“Clearly, we’re looking at transportation,” Spilka said.

Lawmakers have until July 31 every even year to wrap up major legislative business for their two-year sessions. Spilka said she hopes to see work spaced out more over the next five-plus months than the last-minute sprint featured in previous cycles.

"We are trying to get really big bills done sooner in the session so that hopefully we can get more done and continue to be productive and maybe not have that logjam at the end of the year that we tend to have," she said.

Here is how they usually put together a state budget.

House leaders have spent much of the latter part of 2019 and this year working behind the scenes on a bill to raise new revenues for transportation. The House this month also approved a bill empowering state regulators to regulate and enforce the legally required contracts between marijuana businesses and their host communities.

House plans for a carbon pricing bill, as well as health care and housing, are unknown.

Thursday’s passage of mental health care access legislation came two weeks after another lengthy session where the Senate approved three bills calling for net-zero statewide emissions by 2050, implementation of carbon pricing, adoption of an all-electric MBTA fleet, and more.

When a reporter noted that the Senate had passed two significant bills in a three-week span, Spilka replied, “We’re cookin', huh? We’re really hot.”

OMFG!

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Maybe they can clean up this:

"Expanding state bottle law could help curb recycling crisis" by David Abel Globe Staff, January 30, 2020

Six years ago, the bottling industry spent millions of dollars to undermine a cause long championed by environmental advocates.

As part of a barrage of TV ads, Peggy Ayres, a former chairwoman of the Marlborough Recycling Committee, urged state residents to vote against a ballot initiative to expand the state’s bottle law.

“Thirty years ago, the redemption deposit was a good idea,” she said in one ad financed by the American Beverage Association. “But now with curbside recycling, it’s an idea whose time has come and passed.”

The industry’s main argument: Expanding the bottle law to include non-carbonated beverages would deprive communities of much-needed revenue from curbside recycling, but times have changed. Now, with a national crisis that has made recycling more an economic burden than boon for most communities, environmental advocates and local officials are turning that argument on its head.

At a recent hearing on Beacon Hill, they argued that requiring deposits on bottled water and sports drinks — the vast majority of beverages sold today — would do more than reduce litter and the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills. It would save cities and towns millions of dollars by reducing the increasingly onerous costs of recycling and shifting the disposal cost to the beverage industry.

So they are shifting the costs to taxpayers and consumers.

“For the first time since the inception of recycling, our cities will now be forced to pay a costly tipping fee for the disposal of recycled goods,” said Michael Bloomberg, chief of staff to the mayor of Holyoke, which in good years earned as much as $70,000 from its recycling program. This year, the city expects to pay $160,000.

I thought he was running for president.

Reading a letter signed by mayors throughout western Massachusetts, where a state contractor recently told many communities they must pay as much as $150 a ton for their recycling, Bloomberg urged lawmakers to alleviate the financial burden by giving people a financial incentive to redeem bottles and cans. The current deposit is a nickel, though some are calling for it to be increased to a dime.

Yeah, taking more money out of your pocket gives you an incentive to try and get it back!

Adding beverages to a new law — such as wine bottles and nips, which are responsible for increasing amounts of pollution across the state — could reduce some 300,000 tons of bottles from curbside recycling and save municipalities an estimated $45 million a year, according to a draft version of the state Department of Environmental Protection’s 2030 solid waste plan.

Looks to me like alcohol prohibition should be reinstated to save the environment!

“Recycling is failing, and while our residents and our planet pay the price, large packaging companies and the waste industry are experiencing record profits,” Bloomberg told the lawmakers. “Now is the time for producers to take responsibility for the damage they are causing,” but opposition remains firm. In 2014, the bottling industry spent $9 million to oppose the ballot initiative, a move that had a significant impact on public opinion.

One reason they have long opposed expanding the law: Bottlers are required to pay a handling fee of 3 cents a bottle or can to cover a portion of the costs of redemption centers, and 2 cents to other collection sites, such as package stores.

Before the industry began blanketing the airwaves with ads, which often contained misleading statistics, a 2014 Boston Globe poll found 62 percent of likely voters supported expanding the landmark environmental law, but when voters went to the polls that November, nearly three-quarters of them rejected the initiative.

Yeah, how rotten that a political advertising campaign would work when it isn't a position promoted by the Globe

At the recent State House hearing, Steve Changaris, northeast region vice president of the National Waste and Recycling Association, a trade group for waste companies, repeated some of the old arguments, despite the challenges facing the recycling market.

OMFG, F*** YOU GLOBE!

“If you want to kill curbside recycling, do that,” he told lawmakers, suggesting that if too many bottles are removed from the system with an expanded law, there wouldn’t be enough revenue for waste companies. “We need the value of the current plastics at the curb. If we lose those, there will be additional costs.”

In a letter to lawmakers, the Massachusetts Package Stores Association urged the Legislature to “protect the health and vigor” of state recycling programs and raised concerns about the viability of the state’s dwindling number of redemption centers.

“These bills appease the public’s desire for expanded programs while ignoring existing flaws within the current recycling framework,” they wrote.

The group noted that handling fees, paid for by the bottling industry, for processing cans and bottles have not increased in more than a decade. They also complained that many of the recyclables at the redemption centers can go uncollected for months.

“The problem has become so acute that [the association] routinely submits complaints” to the state, which oversees the redemption program, they wrote, but environmental advocates said that an updated bottle law, especially one that would raise deposit fees from a nickel to a dime, would help redemption centers and improve the overall system. Moreover, millions of dollars of unclaimed deposits could be used to support curbside recycling and other environmental programs.

Yeah, a pot of gold, 'er, plastic is out there.

They are LITERALLY nickel-and-diming you!

If a deposit is not redeemed, the money goes to the state treasury.

Let me go gather my redeemable then!

Proponents estimate an expanded law could raise an additional nearly $50 million for the state from unclaimed deposits.

It would also increase the number of bottles that are recycled, they said.

In Michigan, where the deposit is now a dime, the redemption rate is greater than 90 percent; in Massachusetts, the amount of cans and bottled recycled by redemption centers is little more than 50 percent, according to the Container Recycling Institute, a California group that monitors the industry.

An updated law also would go a long way to reducing litter — the initial rationale for bottle laws that were passed in the 1980s. One study by the Australian federal government, which surveyed US states, found that those with bottle laws had 40 percent less litter, and less for trucks to pick up curbside.

“This is about saving cities and towns more money,” Kirstie Pecci, a senior fellow at the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, testified at the state hearing before the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy.

Responding to arguments that the change would raise costs for curbside recycling programs, she said that shouldn’t be the case, as most cities and towns base their contracts on the tonnage of what they recycle.

In Boston, where it now costs taxpayers nearly $5 million for curbside recycling — up from just $200,000 before the crisis began in 2017 — city officials said they support expanding the bottle law.

“It’s a priority in Boston that we increase recycling and reduce litter in our neighborhoods,” said Samantha Ormsby, a spokeswoman for Mayor Martin J. Walsh.

When John Coughlin came up to speak at the hearing on Beacon Hill, the member of the Massachusetts Sportsmen’s Council called it “outrageous” that the Legislature has repeatedly failed to update the law.

“Anyone who says we shouldn’t pass this law is out of their mind,” he said. “It’s proven beyond a reasonable doubt that it works.”

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Related: 

Sunday Globe Special: Garbage For Breakfast

Also see: 

Sunday Globe Special: Downtown Dining

Full up now?