Is Our Bottle Recycling System Garbage?

Bay Curious

KQED

History, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.9 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Have you ever looked at your grocery receipt and seen a charge that says "CRV" next to your canned soda or bottled beer? That stands for California Redemption Value, and it's supposed to be a $.05 or $.10 deposit that consumers can then get refunded when they recycle the beverage container. The problem is, most people never get their money back because... well, it's hard to find a place to trade them in. Reporter Steven Rascón follows the money to see what happens to all those nickels and dimes we don't get back, and how the state is trying to improve things. Additional Reading: Cashing In on the Future of California's Bottle Deposit System Read the transcript for this episode What Happens to San Francisco's Recycling Once It Leaves the Curb? 'You Can't Recycle Your Way Out': California's Plastic Problem and What We Can Do About It How Does Oakland Turn Food Scraps to Soil? California’s Plastic Problem | KQED Newsroom Sign up for our newsletter Enter our Sierra Nevada Brewing Company monthly trivia contest Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcasts This story was reported by Steven Rascón. Bay Curious is made by Amanda Font, Christopher Beale, and me, Olivia-Allen Price. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldana, Maha Sanad and Holly Kernan.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From K-QED.
0:03.0	When Paul Beach was a kid growing up in Maine, he would go to this recycling center that was part of a grocery store.
0:11.0	It was a pretty big space in the grocery store and you just
0:14.4	bring your bottles and cans and they sorted them like green bottles went here
0:17.8	white bottles went there brown bottles went here cans went over there.
0:20.9	Paul noticed that people would walk into the recycling
0:23.8	center with a bag of, well, garbage essentially, and they would walk out with
0:29.0	cash. He wanted in on the hustle. And I would have like $50 in cans.
0:35.0	It took be a while to get that much, but it was a pretty good income for like a 10-year-old.
0:40.0	That experience taught Paul the literal value of recycling.
0:44.4	Every bottle or can was worth up to 15 cents in Maine
0:48.0	because of the state's bottle bill.
0:50.3	That's a law designed to encourage recycling.
0:55.0	When Paul moved to California, where we also have a bottle bill,
0:59.0	he thought things would work about the same.
1:01.0	But his nearest redemption center was far, so he never went.
1:05.3	Now he puts his items on the curb where they're whisked away by a waste hauling company.
1:11.0	I am pretty sure that company that I pay to take the recycling
1:16.0	fishes true and gets all the cans and they get the money for the cans
1:19.0	in bottles.
1:19.8	So I'm like, you're getting paid on both sides.
1:21.4	It's like, this just doesn't seem fair.
	...

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