Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and California Redemption Value (CRV)

During the holidays families and friends may choose to break out some spirits to enjoy. This year take advantage of changes to the California Redemption Value (CRV) program by including your liquor and wine containers when you redeem bottles and cans at your local recycling center. Governor Newsom approved SB1013 in early 2024, a law that allows wine and liquor bottles to be included in the redemption program.

The law establishes a 10-cent refund value on most of the estimated 1.2 billion wine & spirit containers sold in California annually. In addition, SB1013 includes new container types for wine and spirits coolers in the CRV system, including bag-in-box, multi-layer pouch, and paperboard carton containers. A CRV rate of 25¢ now applies to these container types regardless of size: bag-in-box, multi-layer pouch, paperboard carton, and plastic #1-7 pouches.

Why is such a program needed? To understand this, the entire lifecycle of disposable beverage containers needs to be considered. When a driver on a road trip goes into the gas station and picks up a bottle of soda, their perspective is that they are paying for a sweet, refreshing drink. This person has been taught through a lifetime of observations and marketing that the liquid inside that bottle is all that matters. They are not taught to think of the cost of the materials that were harvested and processed to make the bottle, of the plant that filled it with the concoction of ingredients that make up the soda, of the trucks that drove it to the store, of the rent that the station owner pays, and of the labor that it took on every step of that journey. All of this helps the consumer, it would be too much to share the backstory of every product that enters our lives, but it also creates opportunities for producers to quietly change the social contract that we all agreed to.

That driver gets to decide whether to litter, landfill, or recycle that bottle, but they no longer have the ability return it. Historically, they would be able to drop it off for sanitization where it would used again for another person's drink. After World War II, beverage producers shifted the responsibility for what happens to their containers away from themselves and onto the communities that used them. They did that by shifting to new, cheaper materials that carry a large environmental burden and by marketing to everyone that responsible stewardship is a hassle, just throw it away. This new system places costs on the consumer, making communities pay for bottles that are used only once and then pay again for their cleanup, transportation, and the land to hold them forevermore.

The good news is that many states have already started the process of shifting these costs back to the manufacturers using a framework called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). In California, CalRecycle is overseeing the implementation of EPR programs ( https://calrecycle.ca.gov/EPR/ ) for many types of products & materials and has worked EPR elements into California's existing CRV program.

The State's program established a system where consumers pay a deposit for their single-use beverage containers that can be redeemed when returning the container to a recycling center. Over the last 40 years this program has successfully diverted half a trillion containers out of our communities and into the recycling stream, preventing over 300,000 tons of greenhouse gas pollution each year by preventing the need to extract and refine virgin material. Keep the tradition going strong this holiday season by [redeeming your deposit!] ( https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/BevContainer/RecyclingCenters )