California | Beverage Container Recycling & Litter Reduction Act (AB 2020)

Fifteen years after Oregon passed their bottle bill, California passed the Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act (AB 2020)—this makes California the ninth US state in the nation to implement a DRS program.

Similar to California's EPR for packaging program (SB 54), AB 2020 is managed by CalRecycle.

Similar to Oregon’s program, AB 2020 has undergone a number of amendments, including expanding materials in 2000, increasing deposit rates in 2004 and 2007, and more. The full history of AB 2020 is available here. 

What’s Included?

Beverages Covered: beer and malt beverages, wine coolers and distilled spirits, all non-alcoholic beverages (expect milk), and wine and spirits.

Containers Covered: aluminum, glass, plastic, and bi-metal containers.

Exemptions:

• Milk products

• Beverages that are sold in refillable containers

• Beverages sold in containers other than "Containers Covered" section (including paper cartons)

What’s the Refund Value?

California’s AB 2020 has different rates for material sizes, unlike Oregon’s program that has a ten cents USD deposit amount on all covered containers. California’s breakdown includes: 

• Containers that are 24 oz or larger: ten cents USD

• Containers that are smaller than 24 oz: five cents USD

• As of January 1, 2024: boxes, bladders / pouches that contain wine, distilled spirits, wine coolers, and distilled spirit coolers have a twenty-five cents USD refund value

Impact of DRS in California

Similar to Oregon, as an earlier mover in DRS legislation California has seen the benefits of DRS—highlighted in their 2018 rates for recycling PET, aluminum, and glass.

PET recycling rate (2018): 56% (third highest in country behind Maine and Oregon)

Aluminum recycling rate (2018): 77% (third highest in country behind Maine & Oregon)

Glass recycling rate (2018): 49% (eighth in the country)

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

CalRecycle highlights that in 2023 alone, Californian's recycled 18.8 billion containers—which is more than 400 containers per person.

Since the passing of the bill in 1986, the program has helped facilitate recycling of 482 billion bottles and cans. CalRecycle also claims that over 80% of beverages sold into the state are covered by the program.

Furthermore, in a 2022 report on Beverage Container Recycling in California, the recycling rate of covered materials was 70%—data calculated by taking the # of beverage containers returned (19.6 billion) divided by the number of containers sold into California (27.8 billion).

From a 2021 report, this rate is up 2% from 68% in 2021, with a program goal of 80%.

The same report also breaks down the recycling rates by container type—with aluminum, PET, and PP rising above other containers in 2022 with 74%, 70%, and 76% respectively.

The Packaging School highly recommends diving into this report to learn more about DRS in the nation's largest economy (and the fourth largest in the world!) and how states often report on the impact of DRS programs.

Learn more about California’s Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act here.

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