Iowa Groceries Shirk Bottle Bill Responsibilities

“We are at a point today where grocery stores have shown that they are no longer willing to voluntarily provide convenient, on-site redemption services,” Dawayne Johnson, executive director of the Iowa Recycling Association, tells the paper.

During Monday’s rally, he called on legislators to empower the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to enforce the redemption law and to increase the handling fee retailers receive for providing the service to reflect inflation, according to The Des Moines Register.

Under Iowa’s bottle bill, which was enacted in 1979, a 1-cent-per-bottle handling fee is paid to redemption centers and grocery stores that accept the bottles for recycling, while consumers are required to pay a 5-cent deposit. Beer, soft drinks, soda and mineral water, wine, liquor and wine coolers are covered under the law, which is administered by the Department of Natural Resources. 

Under the law, retailers can refuse to accept containers if they have an agreement with an approved redemption center. However, some Iowa groceries have stopped taking the empty cans and bottles, though they do not have an alternate state-approved redemption site, according to the news report.

After the Iowa Attorney General’s office said in early January that it would sue Fareway Stores Inc. if it continued to violate the bottle bill, some stores have resumed collection activities, according to the paper.