CRI president details California's 'bottle bill' expansion in webinar

First, the good news for recyclers across the state of California. 

Sept. 27, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed off on S.B. 1013, which expands the state’s longstanding “bottle bill” to include wine and spirits containers in its California Redemption Value (CRV) funding starting Jan. 1, 2024. Funds are overseen by the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle). 

Consumers will pay an extra 10 cents for most of those containers and 5 cents for mini bottles—known as nips—that contain 1.7 ounces of alcohol, but will be able to get that money back if they return bottles to a redemption center. Starting Jan. 1, 2025, consumers will pay an extra 25 cents for wine and spirits in boxes, bladders, pouches or other similar containers.  

In a webinar breaking down the law’s expansion, Container Recycling Institute (CRI) President Susan Collins estimated that the addition of wine and liquor bottles in their various forms will increase the state’s glass beverage recycling rate from around 30 percent to 59 percent, with 500 million more containers being recycled per year. 

CRI says curbside and drop-off programs are poised to see a $46 million revenue increase once wine and spirits bottles are added to collection. 

Per the existing law, passed in 1987, consumers can redeem deposits of 5 cents on items such as beer cans and bottles, soda cans and plastic juice containers smaller than 24 ounces and of 10 cents on those containers over 24 ounces by turning their empties in to a recycling center. But when they place containers into their curbside recycling bins, haulers can bill the state for the CRV deposits.  

Per CRI research, Californians buy about 1.3 billion bottles of wine and liquor per year. 

According to Culver City, California-based CRI’s research, the expansion will help produce more clean recyclables for manufacturing; support more recycling jobs within the state; shift end-of-life costs for used beverage containers to producers; cut litter for those beverage categories in half; reduce 160,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions; and prevent pollution from manufacturing new containers from virgin materials. 

From there, the news gets murkier. 

Collins said around two dozen provisions were included in S.B. 1013 that will add nearly $900 million in recycling program spending over a six-year period. Another $379 million in recycling spending were passed via the A.B. 179 budget bill that CalRecycle will use for various local assistance, beverage container recycling and litter reduction efforts. 

The state’s beverage container fund balance was last reported to be $635 million, Collins said in the webinar, meaning the increase of more than $1 billion in spending from the amended bills will cost more than what’s available in the state fund. 

And the new programming outlined in the bills has yet to be ironed out. 

Convenience zones and collectives 

During her webinar, Collins said that, starting in 2024, S.B. 1013 will require larger recycling convenience zones (CZs) throughout the state. The center of a CZ is typically a large supermarket, and a redemption center is required to be located within a half-mile radius in urban areas and 3 miles in rural areas. 

Under the amended bill, the CZ radius will extend to 1 mile in urban areas and 5 miles in rural locales if the new CZ will be served by an existing recycling center—a change that Collins said hinders convenience for customers. The state currently has 1,265 redemption centers, a decline of more than 1,200 from 2013. 

Collins said existing handling fee sites will retain eligibility to continue receiving those fees and will not be penalized for CZ distance changes.  

Retailers will see a big change, however, with the bill’s elimination of “Option B,” where a retailer within a CZ could choose to pay $100 per day in lieu of accepting container returns. Starting in 2025, if a retailer is in a CZ with no recycling center, it will have to accept container redemptions in-store and deliver them to a recycling location or pay into a dealer cooperative where a group of stores can organize to provide redemption in one or more CZs. 

CRI says the bill will decrease the percentage of retailers that can be granted a state exemption from 35 percent to 15 percent.  

CalRecycle will spend 2023 creating regulations for dealer cooperatives, which it hopes to establish by 2024. 

“There are no plans outlined on how dealer cooperatives will work,” Collins said. “[Retailers] can organize into any group. There could be five retailers [in a cooperative] in an area, or all of them.” 

New spending adds up 

The amended S.B. 1013 calls for a host of new spending and recycling programs.  

One of the largest is a market development payment to glass beverage container manufacturers that can total up to $60 million per year from Jan. 1, 2023, to Jan. 1, 2028, so long as funds are available. It is designed to incentivize manufacturers to purchase recycled glass to use in making new beverage containers in-state. 

The new spending also takes the form of three glass processing incentive grants that total $9 million. The Recycled Glass Processing Incentive Grant Program will award up to $4 million per year to stimulate the increased use of glass cullet in making new glass beverage containers in the state. The Increased Recycling of Empty Glass Beverage Containers Grant Program will award up to $4 million per year, and CRI said it is aimed at funding regional pilot programs to provide bins and collect empty glass beverage containers from restaurants and licensed liquor establishments and transport them for recycling. Local governments and other entities also will be eligible. The Empty Glass Beverage Transportation Grant Program will provide $1 million per year to facilitate rail transportation of empty glass beverage containers to glass processing facilities within the state.  

In the webinar, Collins said the three grant programs go into effect Jan. 1, 2023, well before CRI expects an influx of glass beverage containers to enter the recycling stream.  

“The timing is a little wacky,” she said. “We don’t see more glass coming in until wine and spirits are added.” 

Notably, the bill establishes $15 million per year for curbside and neighborhood drop-off programs and $15 million annually in Glass Quality Incentive Payments (QIPs) that will only include glass used to manufacture beverage containers, excluding cullet used in fiberglass. Additional changes include the elimination of a daily load limit for dealers delivering returned empty beverage containers to recycling centers. CRV labels on containers will allow for QR codes, with manufacturers allowed to self-certify their labels. Wine and spirits are exempt from the new CRV labeling requirements until July 1, 2025. 

A.B. 179 includes more than $233 million in funding for CalRecycle to use in 2023 for local assistance, beverage container recycling and litter reduction, including $73 million for startup costs for items such as recycling programs, recycling centers, mobile recycling, reverse vending machines and bag drops, and $30 million for startup loans for processors and recyclers. 

Over a three-year period, CRI says A.B. 179 would cost $379 million.