New York collects $120M in unclaimed bottle deposits

Nov. 2

In its first year of implementation, New York´s expanded beverage container deposit law, known as the "Bottle Bill", the state has collected more than $120 million in unclaimed deposits and has helped boost plastic recycling rates nationally.

The Bottle Bill, which went into effect Oct. 31, 2009, added water bottles to the list of beverage containers requiring a minimum 5-cent refundable deposit. Under the new law, beverage companies are now required to transfer 80% of the unredeemed deposits to the state General Fund. Previously, beverage companies kept all the unclaimed deposits.

Susan Collins, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute, noted that 2009 was a year of excellent growth in recycling rates in the container deposit-refund programs around the country.

"The expansions in New York, Connecticut and Oregon added nearly four and a half billion containers to deposit programs, and have the potential to increase the nation´s overall beverage container recycling rate by two percentage points," Collins said. "PET reclaimers in the U.S. are hungry for this material. They are busy building new plants in the U.S., and can staff them with new employees as long as the materials are available to them."

Contact Waste & Recycling News correspondent Chrissy Kadleck at 330-865-6172or wnintern@crain.com

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