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| Photo Credit: AP. |
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California would add wine and distilled spirits containers to its struggling recycling program, while giving beverage dealers another option to collect empty bottles and cans, under a measure lawmakers approved Wednesday. But critics say the bill would also give hundreds of millions of dollars to corporations they say don’t need the incentives.
It’s “a huge
opportunity” to divert hundreds of additional tons of waste from landfills,
said Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting, who carried the bill in the Assembly.
“This bill will be a huge leap.”
In addition,
distributors could form a cooperative organization to collect the containers as
an alternative to the current law that requires stores to take back the
empties, under the proposal by Senate President pro Tempore Toni Atkins.
Fewer people
have been able to claim their deposit refunds in recent years as many
neighborhood recycling centers closed. The advocacy group Consumer Watchdog has
said many grocery stores have been refusing to take back empties in-store as
required.
The measure
cleared the Assembly 54-0 and the Senate 38-0 without spoken opposition. It now
heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The bill
doesn’t spell out how the cooperative would work, but would require
distributors to submit their plan to state regulators for approval. It would
also increase the penalty for violating the law from the current $1,000 to
$5,000 per day and for intentional violations from $5,000 to $10,000 per day.
California
consumers pay an nickel each time they buy a 12-ounce (355 milliliters) bottle
or can, and a dime for containers over 24 ounces (709 milliliters).
They’re
supposed to get that money back by returning the bottles and cans, an incentive
so the containers don’t go into landfills but can be recycled into new
products.
The proposal
would include a 25-cent deposit and refund for wine and distilled spirits sold
in a box, bag or pouch.
Hawaii,
Iowa, Maine and Vermont already have deposit programs including those
containers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Adding wine
and spirits would bring nearly $18 million more annually to the state’s
recycling fund starting in 2024, along with annual costs topping $6 million,
projects the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery,
generally known as CalRecycle.
Newsom’s
administration has proposed grants for automated recycling machines, also known
as reverse vending machines, at high schools, colleges and retailers, and
state-funded mobile recycling programs in rural areas and other places with few
recycling options. It also has proposed temporarily doubling the refunds to
encourage recycling and give back a portion of nearly $600 million in unclaimed
deposits, but that double refund is not in the current proposal.
Consumer
Watchdog, Container Recycling Institute and The Story of Stuff Project objected
that Atkins’ proposal contains too much pork for corporations, costing nearly
$400 million over the next five years for market development and quality
incentives that the groups argue aren’t needed.
Of that,
$300 million would go to glass container makers including E&J Gallo
Winery’s Gallo Glass Company, the nation’s largest glass container plant, they
said.
Consumers’
deposits “shouldn’t underwrite enormously profitable companies such as Gallo,”
Liza Tucker of Consumer Watchdog said in a statement. “These grants do not help
existing redemption centers that are dying on the vine, they only help
manufacturers and the biggest recyclers.”
The
recycling institute withdrew its support, saying the grants would put “a strain
on the ability of the program to operate with financial sustainability.”
Consumer
Watchdog backed the distributors’ cooperative portion of the bill, which is
similar to previous legislative proposals. That option “could work to create
better access if the rules are drafted correctly and enforced,” the group said.
“This is an
issue done what I call the right way” with intensive negotiations over several
years, said Democratic Assemblyman Adam Gray. “We’ve come to a solution ...
good for the industry, good for the state of California.”
Without
addressing the grants, Atkins said her bill would “reduce consumer confusion”
by adding wine and spirits containers, while potentially more than doubling the
recycling of those containers from the current 30%. She said her bill also
gives dealers “a new path to compliance” with the state’s recycling law.
A second
bill heading to Newsom is designed to to help reduce recycling fraud by barring
cash payments from processors to recyclers.