Exploring Hawaii’s Bottle Bill

Hawaii | Deposit Beverage Container (DBC) Program

The state of Hawaii introduced its Deposit Beverage Container (DBC) program in January 2005, becoming the most recent US state to introduce a bottle bill.

According to the Hawaii Department of Health, this program has facilitated the collection of more than 10 billion containers and helped reduce litter across the state. Like the DRSs in the nine other US states, Hawaii’s program has undergone many changes since its inception—see the program’s history and development here.

What's Included?

BottleBill.org provides an overview of what is covered and exempt under Hawaii’s bottle bill: 

Beverages Covered: Nonalcoholic beverages (water, juice, soda, tea, coffee, etc.), beer and other malt beverages, mixed spirits (less than 15% alcohol) and mixed wine (less than 7% alcohol), and alcohol-free wine. 

Containers Covered: Plastic (PET, HDPE), metal (aluminium and bimetal), and glass containers that are 2 liters or less.

Exemptions: Wine, hard liquor, and milk and dairy products.

What’s the Refund Value?

The refund value for Hawaii’s Bottle Bill is 5 cents for all covered containers.

Impact of DRS in Hawaii

Similar to Vermont, Hawaii’s PET, aluminum, and glass recycling rates are relatively average when compared with other US states with bottle bills. However, its PET and aluminum recycling rates are comfortably above the national averages, while its glass recycling rate falls below the national average.

PET recycling rate (2018): 37% (17.96 percentage points above the national average of 19.04%)

Aluminum recycling rate (2018): 55% (23.72 percentage points above the national average of 31.28%)

Glass recycling rate (2018): 20% (5.86 percentage points below the national average of 25.86%)

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

TOMRA states that the redemption rate for Hawaii's bottle bill was 55% in 2023—the third lowest among the 10 US states with bottle bills based on 2023–2024 return rates.

2026 Update

The Container Recycling Institute (CRI) released data in early August 2026 on DRS redemption rates by state, including Hawaii’s bottle bill redemption rates from 2023 to 2025.

In 2025, the redemption rate for Hawaii’s bottle bill was 52%—down 2 percentage points from 2024 and 3 percentage points from 2023. This mirrors the relatively small fluctuations seen in many other DRS states (aside from Connecticut), which experienced redemption rate changes of 1–3 percentage points from 2023 to 2025.

The chart below shows changes in Hawaii’s DRS redemption rate from 2023 to 2025:

Similar to our analysis of other DRS states, we also looked at Hawaii’s redemption rates from 2013 to 2025:

Data from 2013 to 2025 show that Hawaii’s DRS redemption rate has been trending downward, with the 2025 rate 22 percentage points lower than in 2013. This trend mirrors California’s DRS, whose 2025 redemption rate was 15 percentage points lower than in 2013.

Read more about Hawaii’s Deposit Beverage Container Program here. 

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