Dive Brief:

• A California trucker is accused of transporting thousands of pounds of beverage containers and plastic from Arizona to California in an attempt to cash in the items for their California state redemption value.
• Trucker Ricardo Rodriguez told state inspectors at a California agricultural checkpoint in Blythe that his tractor was empty, but it actually had 8,548 pounds of aluminum and 1,522 pounds of plastic in it.
• The containers that Rodriguez was attempting to cash in on had a possible redemption value of about $15,000. He will be arraigned next month for recycling fraud charges.

Dive Insight:

Californians pay a redemption fee when they buy beverage containers, as do people in many U.S. states. But the case of trucker Ricardo Rodriguez points to a possible weakness in recycling laws in the U.S. — lack of uniformity of recycling laws across the country.