Los Angeles, CA—Consumer Watchdog today said that a San Francisco-based pilot program to return consumers their CRV bottle deposit refunds was a flop and urged Mayor London Breed and CalRecycle to cut off any funding sustaining it.
“Consumer Watchdog writes to ensure that CalRecycle ends the San Francisco BottleBank pilot as of January 1, 2025, because it has failed to provide San Franciscans with convenient access to get back their CRV bottle and can deposits,” the group wrote Breed and CalRecycle, the state’s recycling regulator.
“The moment this pilot became operational in 2021, it served to excuse 400 retail stores from taking CRV containers back in store and from refunding deposits for 850,000 San Franciscans. Instead, three trucks rotate between more than 20 parking lots where redemption is offered for three or four hours per week, mainly during weekdays.”
Read the letter. A recent KGO-TV investigation exposed the problems with the Bottle Bank. Neither Breed nor CalRecycle Director Zoe Heller would comment.
The letter cites the evidence of the pilot’s consumer inconvenience:
- While the state’s rate of direct consumer returns of empty, clean containers hovers at 58% for the 12 months ending July 2024, San Francisco County’s redemption rate of direct consumer returns of deposit containers stands at under 40%, an abject embarrassment. (About 90% of that redemption rate is due to Our Planet Recycling, the only major recycling center in San Francisco, which is separate from but runs the Bottle Bank pilot program.)
- Between January 2022 and April 2024, this pilot has attracted only 7,000 BottleBank subscribers out of a city of 850,000, such a paltry number of consumers as to be practically insignificant.
- It costs the pilot 41 cents to hand back a nickel to a consumer.
“CalRecycle should under no circumstances extend or increase state payments of any kind to the San Francisco BottleBank pilot,” the letter concludes. “As of January 1, 2025, retailers of sufficient size will have to take containers back in store themselves and refund deposits in places with insufficient recycling centers or they can form a cooperative to offer redemption service as they see fit.
“San Francisco consumers need and are not getting widespread access to redemption. It is high time to stop throwing good money after bad and require San Francisco retailers to provide convenient access to CRV redemption for their customers.”
