Only ten states and Guam charge refundable deposits on beverage containers, and the reason all states don’t have bottle deposits comes down to a political math problem: well-funded beverage industry opposition, the widespread belief that curbside recycling is already doing the job, refund amounts too small to excite voters, and a legislative process where diffuse public support loses to concentrated lobbying. The ten states with active bottle bills are California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont.1National Conference of State Legislatures. State Beverage Container Deposit Laws Together they represent about a fifth of the U.S. population but have historically accounted for close to half of all beverage containers recycled nationwide. That performance gap is the strongest case for expanding the programs, and the reason opponents fight so hard to stop them from spreading.
Industry Spending Dwarfs the Supporters
The beverage industry has fought bottle deposit legislation for more than fifty years, and the spending disparity is the single biggest reason bills die. As far back as the mid-1970s, the industry was pouring at least $20 million a year into defeating container deposit proposals. Between 1991 and 2011, industry groups outspent bottle bill proponents by as much as 30 to 1, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
That money funds lobbyists in every state capitol, pays for opposition research, and backs the campaigns of sympathetic legislators. The public arguments are familiar: deposits raise beverage prices, burden small retailers with handling returned containers, and create logistical headaches for distributors. There is some truth to the operational concerns. Retailers do need space and staffing for returns, and distributors pay handling fees to reimburse stores. But the costs are modest against the system’s benefits, and the price-increase argument overstates the impact of a nickel or dime that consumers get back if they bother to return the container.
The “Curbside Already Handles It” Argument
The most effective argument against new bottle bills isn’t that recycling doesn’t matter. It’s that curbside pickup already does the work. Most American communities now offer single-stream curbside recycling, where residents toss bottles, cans, paper, and plastics into one bin. Municipalities have invested heavily in that infrastructure, and elected officials are reluctant to add a deposit system on top of something they’ve already paid for.
The argument plays well politically and poorly on the numbers. Single-stream curbside suffers from high contamination rates because everything mixes together. Food residue, broken glass, and non-recyclable items degrade the quality of the entire batch. A Container Recycling Institute study found that only 60 percent of glass collected through single-stream curbside gets recycled into new bottles, compared to 98 percent of glass returned through deposit systems.2Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Bottle Bills and Curbside Collection: An Overview of Recycling Policy Approaches Deposit returns produce cleaner material because consumers sort and rinse containers before bringing them back.
The two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive. Deposit programs can run alongside curbside collection, handling high-value materials like aluminum and PET plastic at much higher recovery rates while curbside picks up everything else. Framing them as an either-or has been effective for opponents, though, and it’s the frame most state legislators hear first.
The Nickel Hasn’t Kept Up
Here’s a quieter reason the programs haven’t spread: in most deposit states, the refund is too small to change behavior. Most bottle bills were enacted in the 1970s and 1980s with a 5-cent deposit, and that nickel has never been adjusted for inflation in most states. If it had kept pace, it would be worth roughly 16 cents today. At five cents a container, many consumers decide the trip to a redemption center isn’t worth the time, especially when curbside pickup is at their front door.
States with higher deposits see better results. Michigan’s 10-cent deposit has consistently produced redemption rates above 85 percent. Oregon raised its deposit from 5 to 10 cents in 2017 and saw a meaningful jump in returns. That creates a bind for expansion efforts: a 5-cent proposal looks unambitious to environmentalists while still drawing full industry opposition, and a 10 or 15-cent proposal provokes even fiercer resistance. Nothing passes.
Why 80 Percent Public Support Isn’t Enough
Polling consistently shows that roughly 80 percent of Americans support recycling refund programs, with strong backing across party lines.3The Aluminum Association. Survey Finds Overwhelming Bipartisan Support for Recycling Refund Programs That hasn’t translated into laws, and the reason is a familiar pattern in state politics. Broad, diffuse public support is a weak force compared to concentrated, well-funded opposition. A voter who vaguely likes the idea of bottle deposits isn’t calling their representative about it. A beverage distributor whose costs would rise is calling every week.
Environmental legislation also competes with healthcare, education, infrastructure, and tax policy for limited floor time. A bottle bill rarely tops any governor’s or legislative leader’s priority list, so it can sit in committee for years without a hearing. Active proposals are working through legislatures in 2026 in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York (an expansion of its existing program), South Carolina, and Washington, with a proposal in Washington, D.C. as well. Whether any pass will depend on whether supporters can overcome the same headwinds that have stalled similar bills before.
Cross-Border Fraud Gives Opponents a Talking Point
One practical issue that gives legislators pause is redemption fraud. When a state charges a deposit but its neighbors don’t, there’s a financial incentive to collect containers in non-deposit states and redeem them across the border. That costs deposit programs real money and creates enforcement headaches.
Modern systems address this through barcode verification. Reverse vending machines scan each container to confirm it was sold in the deposit state. States and producers can use market-specific barcodes that make out-of-state containers automatically ineligible. The technology works where it’s deployed. California, however, relies on visual markings rather than barcode scanning, which has made its program especially vulnerable to fraud, and paying redemptions by weight rather than per container compounds the problem. The existence of fraud doesn’t undermine the case for deposit programs, but it gives opponents another argument and forces proponents to design robust verification from the start.
Extended Producer Responsibility Is Pulling Attention Away
A newer policy approach is complicating the path for bottle bills. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws shift recycling costs onto the companies that make and sell packaged products. Producers pay fees to a central organization based on the type and volume of packaging they put into the market, and that money funds recycling infrastructure, collection, and processing.
As of late 2025, seven states have enacted comprehensive EPR packaging laws: Maine, Oregon, Colorado, California, Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington. These cover all packaging, not just beverage containers, and tie producer fees to how recyclable their materials are. The beverage industry has generally preferred EPR over bottle deposits, in part because EPR spreads costs across all packaging producers rather than singling out beverage companies, and in part because it doesn’t require container-level collection infrastructure. For states weighing their options, EPR can look like a broader fix. Deposit-return still produces higher-quality recovered material for beverage containers specifically, which is what makes bottle-to-bottle recycling viable, but legislators asked to pick one often pick the one industry doesn’t fight as hard.
Who Keeps the Unredeemed Deposits
Not every container gets returned. When consumers throw deposit containers in the trash or a curbside bin, the deposit money doesn’t disappear. Depending on the state, unclaimed deposits flow to beverage distributors, the state general fund, or a dedicated environmental fund. In some states, distributors keep the unredeemed deposits, which gives the companies administering the system a direct financial interest in lower redemption rates.
Reformers have pushed to redirect unclaimed deposits toward environmental programs or recycling infrastructure, and some states have made that change. But the flow of unredeemed deposits is yet another front in the political battle, because any reallocation takes money away from an industry that will lobby to keep it.
What Would Have to Change
The forty states without bottle deposits aren’t concluding that the programs don’t work. The evidence is strong that they do, and state-level studies after deposit laws took effect have found beverage container litter dropping by 69 to 84 percent. Those states are stuck in a political equilibrium: entrenched industry opposition, curbside infrastructure that feels sufficient, a refund amount too small to excite voters, and competing legislative priorities combine to prevent action. Breaking that equilibrium would take a sharp rise in public pressure, a federal mandate, or enough neighboring states adopting bottle bills that cross-border issues push holdouts to act. Short of that, the most effective recycling tool in the country stays confined to the same ten states that adopted it decades ago.