Who’s behind the effort to bump the Mass. bottle deposit to 10 cents

Jul 23, 2023

Members of MassPIRG, a grassroots nonprofit in Massachusetts, celebrate getting 5,000 Bay State residents to vote to expand the "Bottle Bill."Courtesy of MassPIRG

A grassroots nonprofit is making another attempt to update the “Bottle Bill,” a decades-old state law that currently refunds Bay State residents five cents when they return specific bottles to redemption centers. The proposed update aims to include more types of bottles and increase the refund rate in order to reduce litter on the streets and alleviate the financial burden on the redemption centers.

The Massachusetts Beverage Container Law, or “Bottle Bill” as it’s commonly known, was first enacted in 1983 as a way to reduce the number of empty bottle cans in landfills or on the streets. The law added a five-cent deposit to the sale of carbonated drinks which could later be refunded if the empty bottle was returned at designated redemption centers — usually grocery stores or retail centers.

But Janet Domenitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group (MassPIRG), a statewide student advocacy group, says it needs to change.

“We were the champions of the Bottle Bill when it originally passed in the early 1980s — 1982 to be exact —and it has been an extremely effective recycling tool,” Domenitz said. “But it is now 40 years old, and it needs an update, specifically to raise the deposit from five cents to 10 cents and also to cover more containers.”

In its earliest days, the Bottle Bill was a proven success. From 1989 to 1997, redemption centers saw an 81% return rate on empty bottles, according to a state report. That number has steadily dwindled over time before taking a sharp dive during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a lower in-person redemption rate. In 2021, the return rate dwindled down to 38%, according to data from the Container Recycling Institute, a California-based nonprofit.

Plastic bottles (Michael Coghlan/Flickr.com)

Currently, Massachusetts holds one of the lowest rates of return for empty bottles in the Northeast region.

For nearly a decade, MassPIRG has been fighting to update the Bottle Bill. The grassroots organization is now drawing supporters back to the “Better Bottle Bill,” a piece of legislation that they said would “create more sustainable growth across the Commonwealth.”

The group recently celebrated collecting 5,000 signatures across the state in support of the bill Wednesday morning.

“The Bottle Bill is the single most proven effective recycling tool we have,” said state Rep. Marjorie Decker, a Cambridge Democrat who sponsored the bill, in a statement. “We are missing the opportunity to increase our recycling only because the law predates the manufacturing of plastic containers like bottled water and sports drinks. Allowing these to continue to go to landfills and incinerators is a lose-lose for everyone.”

The more recent major push to expand the Bottle Bill was during the 2014 election, when an expansion appeared as Question 2 on the ballot that year. Domenitz said MassPIRG and other environmental groups had hoped that voters would finally expand the legislation by voting “Yes,” the Boston Herald reported.

However, their efforts were countered by The American Beverage Association, a lobbying group representing the beverage industry based in Washington, D.C. They spent $9 million on a “No on Question 2: Stop Forced Deposits” ad campaign, which may have helped deter Bay State residents from voting to expand the bill.

Opponents and lobbyists argued that the expanded bill would burden voters with tens of millions of dollars in costs, despite curbside recycling programs already effectively collecting empty bottles at growing rates.

“The best way to recycle anything is material-by-material and that is one of the reasons the Bottle Bill is so effective,” Domenitz said. “Glass goes with glass, plastic goes with plastic, aluminum goes with aluminum. That’s the way to get things recycled. So I don’t want to discourage anybody from using a blue bin, but absolutely these things are not mutually exclusive. We need a Bottle Bill.”

Ultimately, the beverage companies won with 71% of Massachusetts voters casting a ballot against the Bottle Bill expansion.

Large beverage companies pay designated redemption centers a handling fee for taking back empty bottle cans. However, the fee is considerably lower than the cost of the deposit, with three cents for redemption centers and two cents for stores. As a result, the centers end up losing lots of money in the process of receiving empty bottle cans.

“With an increase in the handling fee, the store wins because it’s going to be more cost-effective for them to do. The state wins because it’s now going to have more product that goes into the recycling system,” said Robert Mellion, the executive director of the Massachusetts Package Association, in a previous interview with MassLive.

If the Commonwealth were to increase the deposit from five cents to 10 cents, beverage companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola could lose out on millions of dollars, according to Domenitz.

“If you’re making these containers, you’ve got to be part of the loop that gets them recycled and they don’t like that and they don’t want to pay the handling fee either,” Domenitz said. “So it’s both those things, they don’t like being told what to do, and they don’t like spending money.”

In late June, both the Senate and the House held a hearing about the “Better Bottle Bill.” As for now, MassPIRG is waiting for the legislation to be reviewed by the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy.

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