As recycling is struggling in much of the United States, beverage companies say they are committed to fixing it. The beverage industry helps pay for pizza parties celebrating top elementary school recyclers and lends money to companies that process used plastic. Coca-Cola and Pepsi, along with Dow, the plastics producer, support nonprofit groups like Keep America Beautiful, which organize events like litter cleanups. By 2030, Coca-Cola wants all of its packaging to be made from at least 50 percent recycled content.
But one approach to recycling that many of these companies do not support has proved to actually work: container deposit laws, more commonly known as bottle bills, which cost them lots of money. In the 10 states where consumers can collect a few cents when they return an empty bottle or can, recycling rates for those containers are often significantly higher. In some cases, they are more than twice as high as in states without such deposits.
For decades, beverage companies, retailers and many of the nonprofit groups they control have fought to kill bottle bill proposals across the country — with great success. Since 1987, only one state, Hawaii, has passed a bottle bill. This year, such measures have been proposed in at least eight states. Nearly all have been rejected or failed to gain traction.
The financial reason for such opposition is clear. If the other 40 states were to adopt expansive bottle bills, it could ultimately cost the industries billions more. The beverage industry says the bills function like a tax and allow governments to collect millions in unclaimed deposits. Beverage distributors, in many cases, also pay a handling fee for the processing of empty containers.