Meanwhile, George is assigned a big project at work but doesn't know what it is and is too ashamed to ask his supervisor for the details.
Since he will be out of town, Mr. Peterman asks Elaine to bid for him at a Sotheby's auction on a set of golf clubs once owned by John F. Kennedy.
Kramer tells him it is impossible to gain a profit from depositing bottles in Michigan due to the gas, tollbooth and truck rental fees.
However, while crunching the numbers for himself, Newman recalls that there will be a surge of mail the week before Mother's Day to be sorted in Saginaw, Michigan.
However, when Steinbrenner sees the project he recognizes that the author is certifiably insane, and has George put in a mental institution.
Struggling to keep up, Kramer dumps their bottles, cans, mail bags, and ultimately, Newman himself to make the truck move faster.
Like most two-part Seinfeld episodes, "The Bottle Deposit" was originally conceived as a normal half-hour time slot episode, ran considerably over the allotted 23 minutes during filming, and was filled out to an hour-long time slot with additional scenes after the producers concluded that editing it down to 23 minutes would be too difficult.
Actress Karen Lynn Scott misremembered Newman's name, but the Seinfeld team decided the goof made the scene funnier, so it was kept in.
During filming of the scene, the running made actor Wayne Knight, then at his peak weight, experience palpitations.
Consulting a doctor afterwards, he was told that it was imperative that he lose weight, which led to Knight developing a trimmer figure.