The Massachusetts Bottle Bill has a chance to be updated for the first time in over 40 years. In 1982, we established a program to return certain kinds of bottles for a five cent deposit. This bottle bill has sat unchanged while the world shifted around it. By failing to adopt updates which are pending in legislation on Beacon Hill — like increasing the deposit amount one gets back for each container, we are currently failing to recycle over 60 percent of our bottles and cans.

Old laws that don’t include certain recyclable beverage containers keep us behind the times. Other states have expanded their bills to accept water bottles, sports drinks, juices and nips of hard liquor with a specific focus on plastic waste. These updates capture the kinds of containers that beverage manufacturers have started to sell since the bill was passed decades ago, a transformed landscape of bottles and cans.

The other essential change the bill proposes is an increase in the deposit per bottle from five cents to ten cents.. Deposits are meant to incentivize recycling. Redemption rates falling to an all time low in 2023 demonstrates that the five cent deposit with its dwindling value no longer works as an incentive. We can look at Oregon and Michigan — the two states with ten cent deposits — and see the two highest return rates in the nation. Let’s follow their success and ask MA state representatives (Michelle Ciccolo for Lexington) to pass an update to the bottle bill.


Ben Haber, MassPIRG (Public Interest Research Group)

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3 Comments

  1. Am wondering about the 60% of bottle and cans failing to be recycled. Where is that number from? Is it the cans and bottles actually in trash going to incinerators/dumps? Or is this number the difference between deposits collected at purchase versus deposits returned at collection centers? With many communities recycling curbside or at a transfer stations I see many deposit cans and bottles in recycling containers for curbside collection or in transfer station recycling centers – unclaimed deposits. With recycling a requirement of communities shouldn’t this program of deposit collection be dismantled all together?

    1. I totally agree with you. When this bill was enacted there was no curbside recycling. Why hasn’t this bill been eliminated?

  2. Well said Ben. With overall plastic recycling at <10% (and that's being generous) it's obvious that any incentive helps.

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