Connecticut General Assembly approves temporary exemptions to bottle bill update

During a Connecticut General Assembly special session Nov. 28, lawmakers made provisional changes to Senate Bill 1037, an expansion of the state’s existing bottle bill that takes effect Jan. 1, 2023.

S.B. 1037, approved in 2021, expands the types of beverage containers that can be deposited to include tea, sports drinks and hard ciders and requires labels/stamps on them to show they are eligible for a refund under the bottle bill. The Container Recycling Institute (CRI), based in Culver City, California, says the expansion will lead to a 13 percent increase in overall beverage unit coverage.

The changes approved Nov. 28 as part of House Bill 6001 provide a temporary compliance exemption to requirements for beverage containers that do not have the label/stamp but are in a dealer’s inventory as of Dec. 31.

The change is because of lingering supply chain issues that have prevented retailers from securing products that meet the new requirements. Without the exemption, retailers would have had to return unsold products that were missing the proper stamps or discard them. This would have resulted in further supply strains for consumers, says Rep. Joe Gresko, co-chair of the state’s environment committee.

Gresko says retailers expect to have stock that complies with the labeling requirements after one or two months into 2023.

The CRI says S.B. 1037 will have several impacts in Connecticut. This includes a higher deposit rate and more containers covered, leading to an increase in recycling; fewer containers landfilled, incinerated and littered; and more high-quality feedstock for container manufacturing.

Since the bottle bill expansion was approved in 2021, eight new redemption centers have opened, bringing the statewide total to 26. Many of the new deposit-return sites are in previously underserved areas, according to the CRI.

By the end of the year, the CRI says 324 retail locations with new reverse vending machines also will have been added to the state’s redemption network.

Both developments were because of a handling fee increase for retailers/redemption center operators included in S.B. 1037 that took effect in 2021. This provided enough revenue to encourage the opening of new redemption centers, plus additional funding for retailers to install RVMs, the CRI says.

“CRI is thrilled that these changes appear to be working every bit as well as we had hoped, and we expect the remainder of the Connecticut bottle bill expansion provisions to dramatically improve beverage container recycling in Connecticut by 2024 when the deposit amount increases from 5 cents to 10 cents,” CRI President Susan Collins says.