LAKE COUNTY— Beginning the first of this year the California Redemption Value, commonly referred to as CRV, was expanded onto larger fruit and vegetable juices as well as boxed containers for alcoholic beverages. Despite an increase in applicable items, there remains little to no recycling center options for consumers to redeem their bottles and cans, especially here in Lake County.
Prior to 2024 consumers payed a 0.05 and 0.10 cent CRV fee on recyclable glass, plastic, and aluminum. According to the CalRecycle.ca.gov website, the state has expanded this program through State Bill 353 stating “Starting Jan. 1, 2024 all fruit and vegetable juice bottles and cans are in the CRV program. As of Jan. 1, 2024, fruit and vegetable juice in large bottles and cans (over 46 oz. for fruit and over 16 oz. for vegetables) join the CRV program.” The recent change also extends into alcoholic beverages as the site also states, “Effective Jan. 1, 2024, this includes beverage containers that are boxes, bladders or pouches containing wine, distilled spirits, wine coolers, or distilled spirit coolers. The CRV refunds are five cents for containers less than 24 ounces, ten cents for containers 24 ounces or larger. Effective Jan. 1, 2024, 25 cents for boxes, bladders or pouches containing wine, distilled spirits, wine coolers, or distilled spirit coolers.”
Though this increase may seem small, it will only add to the states’ surplus of unredeemed CRV deposits. In a KQED article titled “Cashing In On The Future of California’s Bottled Deposit System” author Steven Rascon shared, “When bottles and cans end up in landfills and not redeemed, those deposits are considered ‘unclaimed’ by the state. This unclaimed money sits in the Beverage Container Fund, which is managed by CalRecycle. About 400 people in the state agency who work in the beverage container program are paid out of unclaimed deposits.” bottlebill.org shares data illustrating a recent drop in CRV redemption, showing that recycling rates have decreased in recent years to around 60 percent.
Despite this mandatory deposit paid to the grocer at purchase, only one local grocery store will redeem the cans with a daily maximum of 40 bottles or cans. There are only two state certified buy back centers in Lake County, both run by the Big Valley Rancheria and Robinson Rancheria respectively. The buy back is a pop-up style event and is held monthly on the casino grounds. We reached out to both Robinson and Big Valley, but they did not get back to us by press time for this report.
However, according to the Konocti Vista Casino Facebook page their last recycling event was on February 23, the next event at Konocti is scheduled for March 29 from 10 a.m to 2 p.m. More information is available on the Konocti Vista Casino Facebook Page.
A lack of recycling centers is not the only issue complicating the recycling process as there are several press releases issued by CalRecycles detailing extreme cases of fraud, with three occurrences just last year. In the most recent release dated Feb. 20 2024, CalRecycles shared “Recycling Services Alliance, Inc. (RSA) and its operations manager have been ordered to pay $140.5 million in total restitution and penalties for defrauding California’s Beverage Container Recycling Program.” The three cases referred to in the press releases total over 158 million in stolen CRV funds and are only from the past calendar year.
