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Jennifer Porter

In our team’s year-end review article (2025 Year-End Review: Major Drivers for Materials Management Finance, February 2026), we covered the primary cost drivers that reshaped the recycling industry in 2025 and their implications for financial planning in 2026 and beyond. Extended producer responsibility and recycling refunds were identified as one of these critical drivers. There are currently 10 U.S. states (California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont) with recycling refund legislation for single-use beverage containers, with pending bills in state legislatures to move beverage container refunds ahead in additional states including South Carolina, Rhode Island, and Texas. The national beverage container recycling rate is 33 percent. However, states with deposit return systems average 70 percent. Nine of the 10 states with the highest overall recycling rates have bottle bills. Beverage containers sitting in landfills represent billions of dollars in lost material value and enormous downstream cost to local governments, which bear the burden through litter abatement and facility operations.

As a point of comparison to the recycling world’s gold standard, lead-acid battery deposits net 99 percent return rates nationally, proving the financial incentive works. According to the EPA and Battery Council International, lead batteries are the most recycled consumer products in the country, powered by a combination of state disposal bans, core charges of $5 to $20, and strong industry partnerships. The lesson is clear: when a financial mechanism aligns the interests of producers, retailers, and consumers, return rates follow.

Following is the status of beverage container recycling refund bills in three (3) next generation states:

South Carolina

South Carolina currently has no beverage container refund law. Its recycling rate is among the lowest in the nation at roughly 6 percent. Senate Bill 750, the South Carolina Beverage Container Recycling Act, was introduced on December 10, 2025, and referred to the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources. The bill would require beverage distributors to register with the Department of Revenue and pay deposits on containers collected from dealers or consumers. It would establish a Deposit Beverage Container Fund in the Office of the State Treasurer, provide for the operation of certified redemption centers regulated by the Department of Environmental Services, and require audits by the Comptroller General. Retailers would not be required to accept returns; all redemptions would flow through certified redemption centers, a design feature intended to ease the operational burden on small businesses. If enacted, South Carolina would become the first state in the Deep South with a container deposit program, a significant political and geographic milestone for the recycling refund movement.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island has been pursuing a bottle bill for more than a decade, and 2026 may be its most consequential year yet. The State’s recycling rate for beverage containers hovers around 30 percent, and advocates point out that all glass captured by the state’s current recycling system is used as landfill cover or road fill rather than being recycled into new bottles. In 2025, after multiple iterations of a bottle bill faced opposition from the retail and beverage industries, the General Assembly replaced the legislation with a state-commissioned needs assessment, signed into law by Governor McKee. That study, conducted by a third-party consultant hired by the Department of Environmental Management, is due by December 2026. Nevertheless, a burst of legislative activity arrived in early 2026. Five bills were introduced across both chambers between late February and early March 2026, including H7911 and S3012, which combine extended producer responsibility for packaging with a beverage container recycling refund program, and S2794, which establishes a standalone Beverage Container Recycling Act. Representative Carol Hagan McEntee’s comprehensive proposal calls for a 10-cent deposit per container, with returns handled through drop depots and reverse vending machines, not retail stores, and a nonprofit producer responsibility organization managing the infrastructure. A Save the Bay poll released March 7, 2026, found that 55 percent of Rhode Islanders support a 10-cent container deposit. The state’s Central Landfill in Johnston, which received more than 15,000 pounds of beach litter in the 2025 International Coastal Cleanup alone, is projected to reach capacity by 2046 under current disposal rates, further bolstering the urgency of increasing the recycling rate throughout the State.

Texas

Texas does not meet in regular legislative session again until 2027, but the groundwork laid in 2025 warrants attention. HB 2048 and its Senate companion SB 728 proposed a market-driven beverage container recycling refund program, a first for the Lone Star State. The bill would have created a producer-funded consortium to administer the program, set a 75 percent recycling rate goal, and relied on designated redemption centers rather than retailers. Texas A&M University research found that beverage containers account for 74 percent of litter collected statewide, and the Container Recycling Institute estimates that Texas loses $375 million in scrap value each year from containers that are not recycled. HB 2048 passed out of the House Environment Committee 6-0 on May 2, 2025, the farthest a bottle bill has ever advanced in Texas, but the session clock ran out before a full House vote. Supporters, including NAPCOR, the Aluminum Association, Advanced Drainage Systems, and beverage producer Red Bull, plan to strengthen and reintroduce the legislation in 2027. With more than 30 PET recycling and manufacturing facilities in the state, domestic demand for clean recycled feedstock is a powerful economic driver.

What This Means for Local Government Financial Planning

For the local governments, utilities, and solid waste authorities that we work with, these policy developments carry direct financial implications. A recycling refund program introduces a new, producer-funded revenue stream into the solid waste ecosystem. It can reduce municipal collection and processing costs by diverting clean, high-value containers out of single-stream curbside bins and into separate redemption channels. It can stabilize volatile recycling commodity revenues. It can also extend landfill life, deferring capital-intensive capacity expansions.

As we had noted in our year-end review, for risk-based policy integration, producer-funded revenue streams should be built directly into contracts, rate models, and long-term system plans so risk is managed, not merely absorbed. Agencies operating in states with active bottle bill proposals should begin modeling scenarios now:

• What happens to curbside tonnage and revenue if 70 to 90 percent of beverage containers exit the municipal waste stream?
• How do processing contracts change?
• What new per-unit economics emerge?

The states that moved first—Oregon, Michigan, Connecticut—offer decades of data to benchmark against. The states moving next—South Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, and others—offer a window for proactive financial planning that aligns policy with fiscal sustainability.

As a Vice President and solid waste lead at Raftelis, Jennifer Porter is a planning leader with 24 years of experience in government and private sector sustainability, circularity and solid waste/sustainable materials management initiatives. Jennifer has demonstrated team building skills and has led client projects in-person and virtually in more than 20 states and territories in the US and internationally, as well as with one of the world’s largest retail brands. A Certified Practitioner in Zero ºÚÁÏÍø Principles/Practices, Jennifer’s specializations include sustainability, zero waste, circular economy, solid waste, sustainable materials management, communications and team building. Jennifer has worked on dozens of complex public- and private-sector client projects. She has also held past leadership positions with the Clean Cities Coalition and the Association of Oregon Recyclers, and currently serves as the Sustainable Materials Management Technical Division Awards Co-Chair for SWANA, is on the Solid ºÚÁÏÍø Knowledge Team and the Circular Economy workgroup for the American Public Works Association, and is part of the Recycling Refunds Working Group for the Stewardship Action Foundation. Jennifer is the author of more than 25 published industry articles/speaking engagements promoting thought leadership. She can be reached at [email protected] or e-mail [email protected].