Maine | Returnable Beverage Container Law

The state of Maine introduced their Returnable Beverage Container Law in 1978, becoming the third state in the United States to introduce a bottle bill.

According to the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM), Maine’s DRS program has been the “most successful waste and litter reduction law” in the state’s history.

Maine's bottle bill is co-managed by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM).

Despite the program's success, NRCM notes that lobbyist pressure, inflation, and labor shortages threatened and continue to threaten the success of Maine’s bottle bill.

This led to Maine Governor Janet Mills signing An Act to Modernize Maine’s Beverage Container Redemption Law (LD 1909) in August of 2023. LD 1909 is designed to restructure funding so unredeemed deposits are used to improve the bill, make sorting at redemption centers easier by allowing employees to sort by material instead of brand, and incentivize reuse and refill systems.

Packaging Dive reports that LD 1909 followed an “emergency bottle bill update” in May of 2023, that raised handling fees (paid to retailers, redemption centers, etc. to help with operation costs of reverse logistics programs, machines, and staff) to six cents USD per container from four cents USD, and was in response to fifty redemption centers closing in the state over a three-year period from 2020 to 2023.

What’s Included?

Beverages Covered: beer, hard cider, wine coolers, soda, non-carbonated water beverages, alcoholic drinks, spirits, wine, and more.

Containers Covered: glass, plastic, and metal containers that are 4 liters or less.

Exemptions:

• Milk and dairy products

• Apple cider and blueberry juice produced in Maine

• Seafood, meat, and vegetable broth soups

• Instant drink powders

• Products designed to be "consumed in a frozen state"

• Liquid syrups, concentrates, extracts, etc.

• Products sold in cartons and other formats not listed in "Containers Covered" section

What’s the Refund Value?

Similar to California’s AB 2020, Maine’s DRS scheme has a tiered deposit refund value, including: 

• Beer, hard cider, wine coolers, soda, non-carbonated water beverages, alcoholic drinks, etc.: 5 cents USD

• Wine and spirits: 15 cents USD

Impact of DRS in Maine

As an early mover in DRS, EPR, and championing other environmental legislation, the state of Maine has the highest recycling rates in the nation for PET, aluminum, and glass. We used the same source for all of the states featured in this index, and this is what we found for Maine:

PET recycling rate (2018): 75% (highest in nation)

Aluminum recycling rate (2018): 83% (highest in nation)

Glass recycling rate (2018): 76% (highest in nation)

[data from 50 States of Recycling 2.0 by Ball Corporation & Eunomia]

A National Leader in Recycling

Maine’s recycling rates are impressive and way ahead of the national average—they’re even high compared to other states with DRS programs:

Maine’s PET recycling rate for 2018 of 75% is 55.96% higher than the national average (19.04%) and 28.2% higher than the average of the ten states with DRS (46.80%).

Maine’s aluminum recycling rate for 2018 of 83% is 51.72% higher than the national average (31.28%) and 15.4% higher than the average of the ten states with DRS (67.60%).

Maine’s glass recycling rate for 2018 of 76% is 50.14% higher than the national average (25.86%) and 22.2% higher than the average of the ten states with DRS (53.80%).

Additionally, the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) claims the bottle bill is the "most successful waste and litter reduction law" in the state's history.

The NRCM also states the program helps recycle more than 40,000 tons of material each year—with only 25% of bottles purchased in the state not returned in 2021 (1.17 billion containers sold). This means that in 2021, 877,000+ containers in the program were returned and kept in the closed loop system.

Referencing the same Tomra data we have used for other states, Maine's bottle bill had a 77% return rate in 2023—the second highest in the nation in 2023 / 2024 behind Oregon (87% in 2023).

Read more about Maine’s DRS program and work to uphold its success despite macro economic shifts and industry pressure here.

Read about the bottle bills in the nine other US states here.