A major reform bill to fix California’s broken bottle deposit system and get consumers back hundreds of millions in unredeemed deposits failed in the California Senate after the wine and liquor industry joined with the beverage industry to unleash their lobbyists against the proposal. The bill is now on the inactive file after failing on the floor last night with 17 votes in favor.
SB 372 (Wieckowski, D- Fremont) is modeled on successful deposit systems in other states that put the responsibility onto the beverage industry that profits from the containers to run the program. It also includes the wine and liquor industry in the program, overturning the industry’s long-held exemption.
Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, EJ Gallo and associations representing distributors and producers donated roughly $1.3 million to individual lawmakers between 2017 and 2019 to continue to be exempt from the bottle deposit program.
Wine country’s Senator Bill Dodd was a major opponent. Dodd famously walked out of a PG&E hearing on wildfire issues years ago, ending victim testimony quickly, so he could go to a wine fundraiser with the same lobbyists appearing before him. Many of those same lobbyists, caught on the video, were working against SB 372 last night.
Iowa, Maine and Vermont’s wine industries participate in a bottle deposit program. California’s wine industry continues to fight it by believing its political spending will continue to buy it an outrageous exemption from recycling.
“Californians deserve an accessible redemption system to get their bottle and can deposits back, but the wine industry’s naked greed in continuing an unjustified exemption from the program stopped a common sense proposal today,” said Jamie Court, President of Consumer Watchdog. “The scions of California wine, which accounts for 90% of the nation’s wine production, don’t want to be good environmental stewards or told what to do. Shame on Gallo, Mondavi, and the other first families of wine that have gotten rich off California but refuse to give back to its fight against climate change. The wine industry needs to be part of the solution because today they are part of the problem.