Returns pile up as CT’s ‘Bottle Bill’ doubles deposit
WATERTOWN — The line outside Fran’s Cans and Bart’s Bottles had already grown to roughly a dozen customers by the time doors to the business opened at 10 a.m. Friday, each waiting patiently with garbage bags filled to the brim with an assortment of water bottles, juice containers, and the ubiquitous beer and soda cans.
Inside the warehouse, the morning rush produced a flurry of activity as workers began counting and sorting the haul — more than 11,000 bottles and cans in just the first half hour of business.
“It’s been like this all week,” said owner Francis Bartolomeo, before rattling off sums that he said were double his winter average. “Tuesday was 55,000, Wednesday 44,000, (Thursday) was 38,000.”
Beginning on Jan. 1, the reward for turning in eligible bottles and cans doubled from 5 cents to 10 cents, as part of the final phase of a three-year overhaul of the state’s “Bottle Bill.”
The revisions, which were the result of legislation passed in 2021, are part of an effort to bolster Connecticut’s stagnant rate of returns on eligible bottles and cans, while also updating the decadesold program to include more modern products like kombucha, iced teas, sports drinks and certain hard seltzers.
To do so, lawmakers crafted a series of amendments to the Byzantine system for collecting deposits from wholesalers, paying retailers and redemption centers to collect the empties and finally returning unclaimed deposits — or escheats — to the wholesalers and the state’s general fund. The process proved so complicated that lawmakers twice had to come back to agree on fixes to the law, while an entire website was created to help residents understand the changes.
For many, however, the payoff came this month in the form of the one-time chance to profit off of bottles and cans that had been purchased last year with the lower, 5-cent deposit.
“I figure we’re paying for the bottles, they might as well give us some type of tip,” said Joann Mattocks of Waterbury, as she dropped off a bag filled with some 500 bottles that had piled up at her home for the last several months, in anticipation of the switch.
For that many bottles, the value of waiting was worth as much as $25. Mattocks said she has several more similar-sized bags stored at home, but that she can only carry one or two at a time.
At the Central Connecticut Redemption Center in New Britain, owner Shahil Kantesaria said there appeared to be “quite a bit of hoarding” by customers during the final months of 2023. The resulting tide of post-New Year’s returns, he said, brought his business between 200,000 to 300,000 containers in just a few days — two to three times his weekly average.
“We’ll see if this holds,” said Kantesaria. “We’re wondering if this is the new normal.”
In order to prepare for the switch, lawmakers increased the handling fee for businesses to accept returns, while the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection invested $1.6 million in improvements at redemption centers to help meet the expected demand.
The result, according to Bartolomeo and Kantesaria, has been a relatively smooth — albeit busy — transition to the new 10cent return. For grocers and retailers, which represent the other segment of the collection network, the atmosphere at the start of the New Year has been “busy, but not overrun,” said Wayne Pesce, the president of the Connecticut Food Association, and trade association.
Most larger retail chains in Connecticut — such as Wal-Mart and Stop & Shop — are now required to have at least two reverse vending machines for customers to return empty containers sold at their stores. Those businesses were also allowed to begin limiting returns to no more than 240 bottles and cans at a time starting on Jan. 1, which Pesce said he has advised most stores to do.
“This isn’t what they want to do for a living, they’re not in the recycling business,” Pesce said.
Kantesaria, who has been in the business for 21 years, said the sudden influx in returns this week was still not enough to top the piles of cans that redemption centers handled during the pandemic — a boom period for returns that he attributed to increased consumption driven by stimulus checks.
Connecticut is now one of three states, along with Michigan and Oregon, that offers a 10-cent redemption value for bottles and cans. The seven other states that have passed bottle bills each offer a 5cent return. (Some states offer higher returns on larger-sized liquor and wine bottles, which are not covered under Connecticut’s Bottle Bill).
Still, Bartolomeo said that he does not anticipate many customers driving in from other states such as New York and Massachusetts to take advantage of the additional windfall.
“If you came down with a box truck, maybe,” it would be worth the trip, he said. “It’s too far of a drive.”
Over time, Bartolomeo said the biggest beneficiaries of the increased deposit will be individual “pickers” and charitable groups that collect the containers that others have paid the deposit on, turning them in for a profit.
One such group, the Morris Cares food bank, collects several thousand bottles and cans a month, cashing them in for funds to purchase bread, canned food and other staples to distribute to those in need, said Vincent Aiello, a volunteer for the group.
“It helps us quite a bit … it doubles our money really,” Aiello said of the recent change.
On Friday morning, Aiello arrived at Fran’s Cans and Bart’s Bottles with several bags filled with 600 bottles, enough for a $60 redemption. As he left, Aiello arranged to come by later and drop off another batch of 1,500 containers over the weekend.
A pile of such size would be no problem, Bartolomeo said. He was already expecting a local Boy Scout troop to come by with an even bigger haul — 30,000 bottles and cans — that they had been collecting and saving up for months.