Billions of bottles and cans flow through the American economy every year, from the squeezable plastic of Poland Springs to the crisp pop tabs of OLIPOP. Most of these containers end up in public and household recycling bins, but in a constellation of 10 states, including California and Oregon, many will go to redemption centers, where residents can receive 5 or 10 cents per bottle upon return.
Each of these states has an active bottle bill that sets up a simple deposit system: When someone buys a drink, they pay an additional 5- or 10-cent deposit, which they can receive back if they return the container. For many customers, the price doesn’t register as a deposit. But for those who notice every dime, the bottle bill turns spare containers into cash.
Now, an 11th state is considering a bottle bill. Like most bottle bills, Washington’s HB 2144 is primarily a piece of environmental legislation, created to reduce litter and landfill waste. But this bill goes further: It acknowledges that the vast majority of bottles are collected by people who return drink containers for informal income. If passed, it would not only create a bottle-deposit system in the state, but also pay a premium for bottles returned by nonprofits that support very low-income individuals who rely on this source of funds, addressing an inherent inequality in this part of the recycling system.
“It is a way to get extra income,” said Heather Trim, executive director of Zero Waste Washington, an advocacy group that helped draft the bill’s current language, which was inspired in part by the nonprofits that support these informal workers in other states. “We’ve seen this from other parts of the world, and we’d heard about it from Oregon, and we really wanted that social equity piece in this bill.”
The proposed legislation would place a 10-cent deposit on nearly all plastic, metal or glass bottles sized from 4 ounces to a gallon. It would also build in a review process to ensure that collection sites are accessible and convenient across the state.
Bottle bills are a small piece of a much larger recycling puzzle — and an extremely effective one. Among the 10 states with active bottle bills, nine boast the highest recycling rates in the country, recovering roughly 40% to 65% of all recyclable materials produced, according to a report from Eunomia Research and Consulting and the aluminum packaging company Ball. In California alone, 18.6 billion beverage containers were recycled in 2021 — 68% of all bottles sold, according to data from the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery.
These recycling rates include both bottle bill returns and curbside recycling, as the two programs are designed to complement one another. While curbside recycling covers more materials, including plastic takeout containers, bottle bills offer a financial incentive to recycle and clean up litter from the streets.
Governments and nonprofit organizations that administer bottle bills must track how many containers are recycled each year, yet virtually no data is collected about those who actually make the system run — the people who collect, clean and return those billions of bottles. According to one of the only quantitative studies on the topic, conducted in Santa Barbara, California, and published in 2011, fewer than 50% of bottles are returned by the household that purchased them. For the low-income households that collect them, though, this can add up to $2,800 dollars of additional income per year.
Organizations like Sure We Can in New York, Ground Score in Oregon and The Binners’ Project in Vancouver, Canada, advocate on behalf of this frequently overlooked workforce, seeking legal recognition for their contributions.
Washington’s bill is based on the success of Ground Score, which works with extremely low-income workers, who often face unstable housing or lack the documents to secure formal employment. During the pandemic, as more people were pushed from their homes and the volume of takeout containers in the waste stream rose, the organization secured a contract from the city that paid unhoused people to collect trash and recyclables from the street. Three years later, Ground Score has expanded beyond this pilot and now runs a bottle drop-off site, a tent-side waste collection program and a warehouse that gathers and resells used material from across the city, including wood, fabric and furniture.
This work provides people without formal employment a way to make a living, and, in some cases, it can jumpstart their return to formal work. Kristopher Brown, 37, relied on bottle refunds for two years in downtown Portland, collecting bottles at night, when he wouldn’t run into other residents. When he started working with Ground Score, he began to take pride in the public service he was providing.
“I haven't always been as honest or as truthful then, back in my 20s; I have stolen for my food, I have stolen to do things,” Brown said last summer. “With the bottle bill, I felt more empowered.”
After showing up consistently at the bottle drop-off, Brown is now on payroll as manager of the People’s Depot, a bottle-collection site under the Morrison Bridge in Portland’s central eastside, where he supports other people in need of work. “Once you lose everything, it’s hard to get back on your feet,” Brown said. “My goal here is to create jobs. We need more low-barrier jobs.”
It’s too soon to say if Washington’s HB 2144 will pass through the Legislature this session, but the bill has already made waves by embracing equity at its core.
Erin X. Wong is an editorial fellow at High Country News, covering clean energy and environmental justice. They actively report on informal recyclers, also known as waste pickers, in the U.S. and around the world. If you have tips or would like to speak on this topic, please email them at erin.wong@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. Follow them on Twitter at @erinxy.
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