Dive Brief:
- Connecticut’s beverage container redemption rate hit 92% in 2025, rising significantly from its 65% rate in 2024 due to numerous ongoing upgrades to its bottle bill program, according to data from the Container Recycling Institute.
- It’s another year of major improvement for the state’s program, which logged a 44% redemption rate in 2023. Key program updates, stemming from a 2021 law, have boosted consumer convenience in recent years due to the addition of more redemption locations and a redemption value that doubled from 5 to 10 cents, said Susan Collins, CRI’s president.
- Meanwhile, other states experienced more muted changes to their beverage container redemption rates. Oregon’s rate rose from 87% to 88%, but Maine's fell from 74% to 69%. Other states’ rates fell around 1% to 2%, such as in Hawai’i, Michigan, New York and elsewhere, CRI said.
Dive Insight:
Despite major improvements in Connecticut, the average redemption rates for the 10 U.S. states with bottle bills have dropped significantly over the last decade.
CRI, which tracks deposit return data for those states, is a major proponent of these systems as a way to raise recycling rates and collect cleaner materials. The organization has advocated for states to modernize their programs through higher redemption values, more convenient return systems, broader lists of accepted containers and other improvements.
Legislative changes in the last few years have made a major impact on how effective such programs are, Collins said in an interview with Waste Dive. Updates in Connecticut and California alone have added more than 2 billion beverage containers into deposit systems in recent years, she said.
That’s partly due to California in 2024 adding wine and spirits bottles to its program, along with containers for larger sizes of 100% fruit and vegetable juices. That state also has several grant programs meant to support beverage redemption infrastructure and other efforts, Collins said.
Connecticut continues to raise its container redemption rates due to the range of major updates phased in through 2024, including doubling the deposit value.
The state has also added more kinds of beverages to the program and raised handling fees for retailers and redemption centers. Connecticut also created a grant program to set up additional redemption centers in underserved areas.
While many of those updates started a few years ago, Collins said the 2025 jump in redemption rate reflects how residents have adopted the upgrades into their routines, in part because redemption has become easier. The introduction of more reverse vending machines for locations such as drugstores, for example, added about 200 more locations where residents could drop containers, she said.
“The convenience factor is huge and doesn't get talked about enough,” she said.
Lack of convenience is a factor in some states’ return rates decreasing, such as in Massachusetts, where Collins estimates only 25% of the stores that are required to redeem containers are doing so.
That state also has a limited list of containers accepted in the program, “so you’ve got that consumer confusion factor,” she said. CRI has advocated for Massachusetts and other states that still have a 5-cent redemption value to raise it to 10 cents. Massachusetts is the bottle bill state furthest behind in passing program updates, and efforts to make changes have stalled in the state legislature this year.
Meanwhile, some other states are implementing major bottle bill changes that could take a few years to reap results.
Maine, for example, is in the process of streamlining its container sorting process at redemption centers and changing how its DRS program is funded. That’s due in part to a 2023 law that created a “commingling cooperative” of brand owners that will coordinate the pickup of and payment for redeemed containers, CRI said.
As of July, CRI says Maine’s unredeemed deposits no longer go back to beverage companies. Instead, they go to the commingling cooperative to fund bottle bill system improvements. On October 1, the state will stop requiring containers to be sorted by brand, instead allowing containers to be sorted by material, a change Collins said will improve efficiency and make it easier on redemption center employees.
Maine’s redemption rate decreased in 2025, and Collins predicts that rate might fall further in 2026 as program organizers improve the accuracy of their redemption data during the program overhaul.
“If we see a reduction in the redemption rate, that would not necessarily be a real reduction. It would be us knowing more about the system … and having a fuller, complete picture of the data.” she said. Over time, the program “is generally going to have a more organized, more holistic approach.”
Vermont is also working on notable bottle bill program overhauls, Collins said. A new bill, signed into law earlier in June, will require the program to be run by a producer responsibility organization and require all distributors to join. That PRO will form by January and implement a stewardship plan by March 2029, which must include details on how to add more redemption points across the state.
That same law also called for an immediate increase in the handling fee for redemption centers, which Collins said was necessary to help pay employees for their work. The law also calls for funneling some of the unclaimed deposits into a fund to build new redemption infrastructure, she said.
Though groups like CRI advocate for stronger bottle bills, some MRFs and hauler groups are wary of bottle bill structures. These groups have said the programs could hurt recyclers by diverting valuable materials away from MRFs, leading to loss of revenue.
This story first appeared in the Waste Dive: Recycling newsletter. Sign up for the weekly emails here.
