Bottle Deposit

Penfield Return Center - bonus: it's 2 doors down
from The Original Steve's diner!

I am no fan of the bottle deposit. It was instituted in the time before curbside recycling, as a means to motivate people to recycle their cans and bottles. Well, some of them. It has always been an arbitrary, hypocritical, and political endeavor. I don’t recall, for example, there ever having been a deposit on returnable wine or liquor bottles in states where I’ve lived and drunk… Different states slap varying deposits on different types of containers. But sticking to New York, the current law is a nickel deposit on the following: carbonated soft drinks, soda water, beer and other malt beverages, mineral water (carbonated and non-carbonated), wine products, and water which does not contain sugar, including flavored or nutritionally enhanced water. But not on: milk products, wine and liquor, hard ciders, tea, sports drinks, juice, drink boxes, or waters containing sugar.

So why is there a deposit on a bottle of Coke but not a bottle of Snapple? If the bill really is intended to motivate recycling, why not all cans and bottles? And is a nickel enough motivation to get people to take all their returnable bottles and cans back, instead of putting them in their curbside recycling (or trash)? Obviously not, or the economics of the deposit wouldn’t work. And obviously not, from the number of houseguests I’ve had who throw all their empties in our general recycling bin for me to pick out… Or all the bottles collected by the homeless and returned by the hundreds at Wegmans on East Avenue...

I recently got fed up with having to remember which bottles we purchased at Wegman’s vs. Walmart vs. Beers of the World. You have to know that, because if it isn’t sold at a particular store, it isn’t returnable there, either. And I got fed up with feeding my containers one by one into Wegmans’ machines, which takes about 20 seconds per container, and that’s if it doesn’t reject it unnecessarily (their tiny water bottles take particular finesse at inserting, and some of the items they sell get rejected no matter what, and you have to take them in to Customer Service). And I got fed up with having an odd assortment of bottles that didn’t come from Wegmans littering up the garage. So I finally went to the Return Center in Penfield, where not only do they take all returnable bottles, they also do the sorting for you, and I got my money for my 84 containers within a minute of entering the store, without getting my fingers sticky (some cans don’t get rinsed quite as diligently…).

I asked the young man how much the redemption center was reimbursed for returns, and he informed me it’s between 6 and 8 cents, depending on the type of container and manufacturer. Hm. The deposit math is somewhat opaque. It reminds me of Milo Minderbinder’s scheme in Catch 22, summed up in Closing Time: “…he contrived the fruitful and abstruse financial strategies for buying fresh Italian eggs from Sicily in Malta for five cents apiece and selling them to his mess hall in Pianosa for five cents apiece at a handsome profit that increased the squadron’s capital supply, in which everybody had a share…” Because all along the way, businesses and the State are making money.

Until 2009, beer and soda distributors kept all the net nickels of unreturned bottles. Since then, 4 of every 5 cents of unclaimed deposits is remitted to the NYS Department of Taxation. This scheme only works if there is leakage – if there are enough lazy people who don’t bother to get their deposits back. According to an article in the Democrat & Chronicle on 12/20/17, New York collected more than $102 million in 5-cent deposits that went unclaimed during the state's 2016 fiscal year, … (amounting) to more than 2 billion recyclable containers that went unreturned in a single year.” That’s an enormous additional tax on consumers. Somehow, I don’t think the program is motivating what it’s meant to be motivating… 

For other attempts at explaining this convoluted system, see:
https://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/new_yorks_bottle_deposit_creat.html
or
https://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/57687.html