COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – Michigan grocery stores and independent retailers are mounting a push to repeal or heavily modify the state’s iconic 50-year-old “Bottle Bill,” arguing that forcing food retail establishments to accept dirty beverage containers is a major sanitation and financial burden.
A recent survey by the Midwest Independent Retailers Association (MIRA) revealed that an overwhelming 90% of member retailers strongly support moving bottle and can returns entirely out of grocery stores. Store owners emphasize that handling sticky, pest-ridden returns in the same facilities that house fresh produce and meats creates a severe conflict with strict food safety standards.
Additionally, a University of Michigan study highlighted that the outdated system imposes roughly $90 million in cost pressures on the retail industry annually due to necessary investments in reverse vending machines, labor, and dedicated storage square footage
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While lawmakers have recently introduced bipartisan bills to refine the return process and add consumer protections, retail advocates insist it is time to pivot toward modern, comprehensive recycling alternatives.
Proponents of a repeal note that consumer return rates dropped to an all-time low of roughly 70% in 2025, compared to historic highs near 90%, signaling that the current model is losing its efficacy.
Industry leaders point out that over 65% of Michigan communities now have access to curbside recycling infrastructure that did not exist when the 10-cent deposit law was drafted in 1976.
MIRA representatives say that they are not seeking to abandon environmental progress, but rather to shift the collection burden off grocers, stating, “What we’re advocating is that now is the time to start thinking about a more modern way to do it and to alleviate this burden that we put on our retailers for 50 years.”
We buy them containers from them so they should collect them back
Eliminate 10cent refund and use your recycle bin.
Put a huge fine on for littering.
As far as I’m concerned they should include ALL bottles with a 10 cent return. Expecting recycling to pick up the slack will never happen. Get ready for much trash on the road side. People in this era are slobs.
I’m ok with bottle return being stopped as long as they stop charging extra per bottle
It was 10¢ in 1976, and it’s 10¢ 50 years later. Maybe it’s time to increase it to…20¢ per bottle?
We could also forbid alcohol sales in grocery stores. I think given the choice between accepting returns and selling beer will be easy for retailers.
Return rates have steadily dropped because 10 cents isn’t worth nearly as much anymore. Raise the return to 25 cents and include all bottled beverages and you would see much higher returns.
Grocery stores have many ways to avoid returns. Don’t sell anything that has a return. They also don’t need to buy machines, plenty of places. Just hand count your return.
That’s hilarious. You don’t work in retail do you? The store I work at does @ $1,200+ in bottle returns DAILY. That’s 12,000 bottles, to hand count? Double that on holidays. You pay that deposit up front, but many people give them away or as I do, donate them to the humane society. It’s nasty and keeps bottle clerks very busy changing the bins constantly. Each week over $10,000 in payouts. Yes it’s a way to recycle plastic and glass, but no one has yet come up with a better solution on how to change the recycling. Also there are less than 10 states that recycle them this way
We could also make stricter rules on people who return our cans and bottles. Enforce them for people who don’t rince out there cans can not return them unless they do. Alot of homeless people make there money returning cans and bottles and some of us lower income people use this as extra money also.
Michiganders probably take for granted how well the bottle return program has worked all these years.
Visiting Cumberland Falls, Kentucky, I couldn’t believe how many pop bottles and cans were polluting what should have been a beautiful park. Same thing at a sports event in Ohio. In Michigan, most people take their pop bottles with them. It keeps the state cleaner. You don’t see pop cans everywhere at the Pictured Rocks or Tahquamenon Falls.
Bottle deposits have historically been a source of income for homeless people.
If fewer people are taking them back, perhaps the deposit is out of date… Too low. If anything, the program should be expanded to include more containers and a higher deposit.
Now, does a grocery store make sense as the best location to return them? Maybe that could be changed. I worked as a teen at Kroger and handling the bottle return was an icky job. So there is room for refinement of the deposit program, but don’t discard it!
I signed up just to tell brett how disgusting this article reads and how outrageous your claims are. With mental health crisis on the rise and being homeless made into a crime your cheerleading for multi-million dollar companies to stop helping the needy because “used cans are yucky” is the most out of touch headline I have had the displeasure of reading.
10 cents on a soda they sell at the checkout cooler for $2 is not the incentive it used to be. Also their automated return systems are bad or broken often.
As to 65% having access to curbside recycling how much of that is free? Not included with a trash service you pay for, not you buy the bins, FREE?
If you can’t return bottles to get your deposit back then you gotta revoke the deposit, which is going to result in 99% of bottles and cans being discarded in the regular trash or tossed into the road.
We can just dump them all in the grocery store parking lots then.
And what does dumping them in the grocery store parking lots solve? Everyone is complaining about them ending up in the trash, just dumping them in parking lots is most definitely going to land them in the trash.
If they do not take where are people who don’t drive, in apartments, or handicapped suppose to do? I was all mine as I empty them so it won’t be fair to me or anyone in the situations mentioned above or the ones washing them out. And a lot of small corner stores limits how many you can return at a time
It’s ridiculous the retailers only get a percentage of the unclaimed bottles and not something for handling each one. if the state addressed this so it wasn’t so costly for the retailers that problem would be solved. Why does the state get 75% of all of the unclaimed bottle returns and does nothing to earn it.
This is a great incentive for grocery stores to stop carrying beverages that require deposit, or else to go after those companies for financial incentives to carry their products.
This isn’t a regulatory problem. We need the system and it’s healthy for people and the environment. If it’s costing companies money then they should stop carrying the product or work with those individual companies for the money they need to support carrying their product. It’s as simple as that.
Everywhere else it never was 10.cents#
If you are going to charge the deposit, you need to take the return. Expecting people to pay for recycling is part of the issue. In KY where I used to live, they had several containers that housed plastic, cardboard or paper and other things. You only had to put it in the right bins. People recycled milk jugs and everything. Inmates from the detention centers would empty the bins and band it up. Free and people participated.
I’ve been in AZ for the past 20 yrs. No bottle deposits there. You never see cans/bottles as litter. They pay .90-1.50 per pound at the scrap yards. You see folks riding their bikes around picking up cans, going thru the bins at gas stations, they turn them in for money. I asked the can man once how much he made picking up cans. He said not one red cent, I donate them to the church, and good thing happen for me. Cool. Ill be honest, Im not putting a bag full of cans in my car, hauling them into the store, stand in front of a sticky gross stinky machine and feed it cans for 10 cents. I throw them in the trash because I dont want to wash cans or store them. Just like the grocery stores say, its unsanitary, draws bugs, it’s just freaking gross.
Not only that a lot of retailers refuse to take bottle and can returns even though sell the products in their stores, even if the product is purchased in their stores, this is especially true all over Detroit.
I think they should be forced to take the returns of the sell the products, or at the very least post a sign saying they don’t take returns so the customer can decide if the want to proceed with the transaction at that specific store!
So are they getting rid of bathrooms as well? Or is this just corporations that already charge 10X the value for everything telling us all to screw ourselves? Who tf writes these articles treating corporations like people? So sick of the bootlicker mentality.
Recycling is good for everyone, and so is sanitation. There are many ways to uphold both. Brain storm idea and find solutions to serve both.
Recycling is good for everyone, and so is sanitation. There are many ways to uphold both. Brain storm ideas, and find solutions to serve both.
Michigan returns about 4 billion cans & bottles annually. States without a return law see 20 to 25% recycling rates.
That would leave about 3 billion containers in landfills or on roadsides each year.
That is a heck of a lot yuckier!
I work @ Kroger. The bottle room is maintained partially well. The process is very time consuming. I understand that some people may make a living off of people’s discards. The process need to be refined. Thanks.
I am definitely in favor of this. It is much easier for me to toss them in my recycling bin then have to take them back to the store. And if they raise the deposit that means the initial cost goes up for the customers. There are 40 states that don’t charge a deposit, you can’t tell me they haven’t figured out a better way.
A quick inflation calculator lookup says the return price should be around 50 cents. If it was raised to 25 or 50 cents, a lot more people would return cans.
You realize raising it to 50 cents would add an additional $4.80 cost to the consumer at the checkout purchasing a 12 pack of drinks, right?
So instead of about $13 for a 12 pack of drinks, you’d be looking at more like $18…before sales tax.
Why don’t we just raise it to a cool $1 per container to *really* incentivize returning them while also turning drinking purchased beverages into a luxury activity? Lol
Hi Meijer worker here I haven’t heard anything about the removal or possible removal of bottles returns but I will say those 10 cents can’s help people. Those who can’t find a steady job or those who do have jobs but don’t get paid a livable wage may rely on them. I collect my cans and return them and they help with gas. If we do get rid of these will the 10 cent tax remain if so they better be ready for alot of angry people. But then again this could be fake news ya know something to distract us
What would remedy this is people washing their hands afterwards before they go shopping and employees should be wearing gloves and taking PPE precautions at their place of employment. How about instead, we tackle the problem of people bringing their animals into grocery stores that aren’t service animals and carrying them around with their hands on their butts and then touching fresh food. How about we tackle that instead of taking away something that’s quite needed in this economy for the lower income.. i think the bottle return sanitation can be easily remedied with workplace rules and let’s focus on people bringing their dirty dogs into the store that aren’t service animals to come into the store and getting fur and feces all over our food.
Michigan is one of the 10 states out of 50 that has bottle return. If it’s so great why only 10. Many small stores add the tax after ringing up the deposit against the law but still
happens. Get rid of it
I moved to Michigan 10 years ago from the state that didn’t have bottle return but had curbside recycling. The difference of bottles and cans along the roadsides and elsewhere was astonishing and greatly appreciated.
The only acceptable reason to change that now is if the retailers pass ALl of their savings to the consumers via lower grocery prices. There’s absolutely no other reason to do it.
What will happen is that people will keep complaining and they will just get rid of bottle refunds that’s how they work
It’s true in some cases people do bring dirty bottles to the stores but most stores don’t accept them they have to be clean but when the pandemic pandemic was here the stores didn’t take them and we still have some stores around that still don’t take them they give us excuses of why but me myself I reported some of the stores that did this and I even tried to get with the people here in Michigan to start a bottle and can return center but so far never heard anything
This is a tax on the poor. If the grocery store can sell beer and take food stamps, they should have to take returns. They charge me for the bottle when I buy the soda or beer, they can give me my dime back. Raise the price on drinks with returnable cans and get the money back.
Here here. The deposit is nothing more than a hidden tax and the return process is antiquated. Take the millions in unclaimed deposit money and invest in state of the art single stream recycling and making curbside recycling more available in the community. The current process sucks.
I agree with many comments about upping the return amount. It would encourage more returns; and perhaps stipulations as to how clean. For road returns (sandy,or dirty) have a means of counting; maybe at the help/lottery desk? I think improving the system is a better way to ensure a cleaner environment. BTW, not Everyone has garbage and recycling. We have to take ours to a center, and PAY fees. For both garbage AND recycling.
As someone else mentioned, that itty-bitty 10c/return allows people to scrape by. Sadly, even many who are employed still depend on those returns, myself included. If we’re going to move to a curbside system, there should be a similar monetary incentive for the people to jump on board otherwise I predict that you’re going to see an uptake in litter.
Instead of trying to change to the law to snatch away pennies from people who count on it, it would instead behoove the retailers put stricter sanitation protocol in place. I’ve seen many local mom n’pop retailers demand that returns are washed and clean before being brought back to the store, and that employees wash their hands before returning work after handling. And it works! People follow the protocol and everyone walks away a little happier. You’re telling me large chain retailers can’t do the same? Please.
Instead of dreaming up new ways to take little bits money from people who already barely get any at all, figure out something to make the system less of a pain across the board.
I just throw them away, they are lucky if i even bother with throwing then into recycling.
That law sucks so bad, who elected the dummies who passed that. Get informed and vote. Hold your politicians responsible. What a waste of money and labor. Dr Sandwich collection people handle the recycling like most other states in the United States.
Solution: Don’t buy products with a deposit from any store that doesn’t take deposits back. The retailer will come up with a solution when those items remain on the shelves while the bottlers are still delivering more products that they aren’t selling. The problem would work itself out.
Definitely need to expand this law to all single use bottles and make it $0.25 per bottle. If the state wants different collection sites, fine, but retailers already have their can smackers in place. Michigan is pretty pristine with lots of tourism, but water bottles often discarded. Want to see more liter all over the place or less?
I agree with the idea of increasing the deposit to 20 or 25 cents; if they did that, you could then take a portion of that increase to provide funding to those retailers for creating separate areas within those stores for returns, thus keeping the areas where food products are sold cleaner.
In.a Country where obesity is running rapid due to the three isles of soft drinks at every supermarket your concern is the 10 cents deposit. These prices for soft drinks are astronomical yet they’re complaint is the returns which you pay for. Adding to the deposit only raises the cost which is already too high and will cost drink companies money if we stop purchasing the items. DON’T SELL IT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO TAKE THE RETURN S and see what happens to you sales on beverages.