Container deposit legislation in the United States

[5] Between March 11, 2020, and June 2020, most states with container deposit legislation, except for California and Hawaii, temporarily suspended the bottle bill requirements as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[6] There have regularly been campaigns in the early 21st century to introduce container-deposit laws in various U.S. states and territories, or to improve or expand existing legislation, including but not limited to the following initiatives:[47] While bottle bills were originally intended to incentivize people to return their own containers, the redemption value is often too low for them to bother.

This has led to calls to replace the cash rewards with food assistance or store credit instead in order to acknowledge the bills' actual use as a social service program, and prevent the money from being spent on illicit goods.

[57] While noted as drastically increasing recycling rates, controversy arose in jurisdictions such as New York as to whether the bottle deposit fees place an undue burden on consumers.

Proponents countered by saying consumers could voluntarily get the money back,[59] although US$125 million in unclaimed deposits are collected yearly by the New York State government alone.

The vice president of the club suggested the thieves committed the crime of returning empties for cash at the BottleDrop redemption facility nearby.

[62] A machete-wielding male subject was observed taking a bag of empty cans set aside on the porch in front of the house and was confronted by a neighbor in Medford, Oregon.

[70] In 2018, the Washington transit agency C-Tran banned large bags of empty bottles and cans on its buses due to issues with passengers bringing them onto bus lines that cross the border into Oregon.

[72] In 2019, a Grand Rapids group of five was arrested for returning photocopied bottle slips at numerous Meijer stores in a bust worth thousands of dollars.