A bill that could decrease Connecticut’s bottle redemption rate from 10 cents to 5 cents passed out of the Finance, Revenue, and Bonding committee on Wednesday.
Senate Bill 516 would set the rate at 5 cents if the bottle redemption rate —the number of containers returned divided by the number sold — of the state, or any distributor, surpasses 100% in 2026. Recently, Connecticut’s redemption rate hit 97%.
“Some pretty smart people outside the state of Connecticut have figured out how to maybe make a living, maybe a pretty good living, on redeeming bottles and cans from outside of Connecticut, bringing them into the state, where they paid 5 cents outside of Connecticut,” said Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, co-chair of the Finance Committee.
During his testimony, Fonfara said these fraudulent over-redemptions have burned a $14 million dollar hole in distributors’ pockets.
The bill passed 38-15. Fonfara told CT Mirror on Wednesday he is not sure if the bill will make it to the Senate floor.
Democrats passed an emergency certification bill in February that increases fines for fraudulent bottle returners and requires redemption centers to get a license from DEEP.
As of April 1, redemption centers will lose out on 1 cent of their handling fee per bottle if they do not use barcode scanning technology.
But some lawmakers feel more action is still needed. The Environment Committee passed SB 457 in March, which requires distributors to manage their own container redemption programs and commissions a DEEP study of previous anti-fraud measures.
Rep. John-Michael Parker, D-Madison, the co-chair of the legislature’s Environment Committee, hopes that through SB 457 lawmakers can “keep the conversation going.”
“It’s important to me that we allow the time necessary for the actions we took in the E-Cert to play out,” Parker told CT Mirror on Wednesday. “I don’t know exactly what that will mean in terms of what benchmarks we need to see. We’re still figuring that out, and it’s going to be an ongoing conversation, but a redemption rate over 100% is unsustainable.”
Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford, voted against SB 457 because it didn’t go far enough to address manufacturers’ roles, she said.
“We also received a tremendous amount of pushback from the manufacturers, who really could come to the table and solve this problem for the state of Connecticut by having a special demarcation on the Connecticut bottles and cans,” Cohen said at the Environment Committee meeting on the bill in March.
House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, who supports SB 516, said SB 457 “has some pipe dream proposals in there. And meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and every day that goes by, the state is potentially on the hook for more money.”
Candelora told CT Mirror he thinks passing SB 516 will be difficult but also hopes lawmakers can continue the conversation.
“I don’t think Democrats or Republicans are going to want to continue to subsidize a redemption program when we have so many other pressing issues like education costs and health care costs,” he said.
