The small recycling center tucked directly under Highway 101 in San Francisco is a flurry of activity as customers with shopping carts and trucks full of beverage bottles line up to redeem their containers.

Up until a few years ago, Our Planet Recycling’s underpass location was one of the last sites in San Francisco that offered redemption services for the state’s California Redemption Value (CRV) program. The city saw numerous redemption sites close in recent years, a problem also felt throughout the rest of the state. Over the last 10 years, more than half of California’s redemption sites closed. 

On a recent day, owner Ors Csaszar nodded to some of his regular customers and waved traffic through the tight parking lot. He’s the first to point out that his facility’s location can be inconvenient to get to or makes some people uneasy to visit because of the industrial area. 

Hoping to create a more convenient alternative, Our Planet Recycling worked with the San Francisco Department of the Environment and the San Francisco Conservation Corps to launch BottleBank, a mobile “bag drop” CRV service that sets up in grocery store parking lots throughout the city.

The program officially launched as a pilot in 2022 with $1 million in funding from CalRecycle. Over the last two years, it has grown from offering a few locations to more than 20 locations for people to redeem their containers under California’s CRV program.

“You could either go to one of the few recycling centers and wait several hours to [complete] this very inconvenient procedure, or you could go to your favorite grocery store and drop the bag off while you shop,” he said.

There are 1,285 recycling centers statewide that buy back empty CRV beverage containers, according to CalRecycle.The agency estimates 19.6 billion containers were returned in 2022.

A recent change to California’s bottle bill, which added wine and spirits bottles this year as well as more kinds of 100% juice containers, could bring in higher redemption volumes in coming years. The Container Recycling Institute estimates the wine and spirits update will add half a billion additional containers to California’s program each year, and another 188 million in new juice containers.

Creating buy-in for a new redemption model

BottleBank program participants use special blue bags to collect their CRV-eligible bottles and cans, then drop them off at a mobile collection site. Employees count the containers inside and scan the code on the bag, which allows the refund amount to be deposited into the person’s BottleBank account. As of this summer, about 7,000 people have BottleBank accounts, according to Alina Bekkerman, CRV zero waste coordinator for SF Environment.

San Francisco’s BottleBank is based on Oregon’s Green Bag model, and experts from the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative helped San Francisco design and implement their program.

While some container redemption setups across the state allow users to return bottles for cash up front, Bekkerman said an app-based redemption program similar to Oregon’s was a better fit for San Francisco residents, many of whom want services they can manage from their phone.

Making the program convenient for residents was a bit of a struggle at first because it required convincing grocery stores to get on board, Csaszar said. He pitched the program as “zero involvement,” meaning store employees wouldn’t have to manage any part of the redemption process and would only have to offer part of their parking lot for the program. 

He was met with skepticism, in part because of the history of tension between California’s CRV program and grocery stores. “We were telling people, ‘ just give us two weeks, and if you don’t like it, we pack up and go,’” he said.

California’s bottle bill requires beverage dealers — including supermarkets and some smaller grocers —  to redeem containers in-store if their shop is farther than a half-mile from a recycling center. The alternative is to pay a $100-per-day in-lieu fee.

In San Francisco and other California cities, many of these half-mile “convenience zones” have disappeared as recycling centers closed over the years. When the BottleBank program launched in 2022, SF Environment estimated about 600 beverage dealers in the city were outside of any convenience zone, meaning they either needed to redeem containers or pay the daily fine. 

Some grocers said the operational challenge of accepting higher volumes of containers, mixed with the financial burden of a possible fine, was too taxing for businesses, especially as the economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recyclers also struggled as more redemption centers closed, Csaszar said. “We’ve always tried to be entrepreneurs. As a recycler, you have to do everything right, otherwise you lose the business. The scrap price drops and you’re out.” 

SF Environment, drawing support from local grocer’s associations, pitched the BottleBank program as an ideal compromise. It “effectively relieves businesses of their collection obligations and financial penalties because there is now an operating, viable alternative for participants to recycle and redeem,” the agency said in a statement when the program launched in January 2022. Today, the majority of BottleBank sites are next to grocery stores like Safeway, Trader Joe’s and Grocery Outlet.

Adding options to San Francisco’s container deposit landscape

California has long grappled with how to best manage its beleaguered container deposit system, including how to make it more effective and convenient for residents. Building off of innovations in places like San Francisco, CalRecycle recently awarded nearly $70 million in innovation grants to recyclers, community organizations and supermarkets to help improve redemption programs.

CalRecycle says the funding will support more than 250 new recycling sites across 30 counties, including a reverse vending machine project in San Francisco. Other projects anticipated throughout the state include more mobile recycling programs, reverse vending machines or bag drop programs, meaning a program similar to BottleBank could start up in another California county. 

CalRecycle says more funding is expected in the coming year, including an additional $138 million for more redemption innovation grants. 

BottleBank aims to grow alongside any new container deposit systems San Francisco might gain in the next few years. Csaszar said BottleBank collected 3.5 million containers in 2023, compared with 1.5 million in 2022. The program is on track to collect even more this year, especially as it looks to expand its locations and hours.

However, the program hasn’t been without controversy. In 2023, BottleBank came under scrutiny from Consumer Watchdog, which said the pilot was too expensive and delivered too little to consumers during its first 15 months in operation. It criticized the $3.6 million in grants and services the program had recieved at the time, saying the money spent on personnel, equipment and operating expenses was financially unsustainable. “The Bottle Bank is broke and a project that costs 79 cents to return a nickel deposit after 15 months of operation is a failed project that does not deserve more funding,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, in a statement.

Others have criticized BottleBank’s hours of operation, which vary based on location and generally are only open midday during the week. On a Friday earlier this summer, one midday grocery shopper at a Safeway near Golden Gate Park said she was using part of a lunch break to drop off cans. Another said they were unfamiliar with the program.

Csaszar said the program did face obstacles when it first started out, but defends the way BottleBank operated when it first started. “To start the business — and this is a business — it takes time, and you have to invest. It takes time for those investments to pay out.”

But Csaszar and other organizers say there is also room for improvement. In July, BottleBank rolled out a new mobile app, and the program is also working on rolling out new technology that could allow users to drop off bags at unstaffed, kiosk-type locations at any time of day. More word of mouth would also help increase participation, he said.

Adapting to California’s changing bottle bill

Changing bottle bill laws in California could also influence how BottleBank operates in coming years, Bekkerman said. 

For the last two years, the program has been funded mainly through grants from CalRecycle and other sources. Now, a new law set to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025, will place more responsibility on certain large beverage retailers. Those not served by a recycling center will have to either set up an in-store redemption system or create a “dealer cooperative” with other retailers.

“What being a part of a dealer cooperative means is yet to be established, meaning that the state has not outlined a template for a dealer cooperative,” Bekkerman said in a June interview. “But the vision is that stores form a nonprofit organization, and that organization pays in money to have a working CRV redemption program for [those stores].”
 

That could mean that nonprofit might hire service providers — such as BottleBank or other types of redemption programs — to make sure their customers have convenient redemption opportunities. 

The success of BottleBank, as well as any other redemption services San Francisco might gain in coming years, will hinge partly on stores participating in the dealer cooperatives, as well as “the state's requirement for these types of solutions to be funded by dealers,” she said. It also means CalRecycle will need to enforce the new dealer collective rules to keep programs running smoothly, she added.

Back at Our Planet Recycling, Csaszar shifted through a pile of blue BottleBank bags awaiting processing. The sound of glass pouring onto a sorting belt nearly drowns out his words. “We always want to do more, make it work better,” he said. “There’s always more ideas to come.”

This story first appeared in the Waste Dive: Recycling newsletter. Sign up for the weekly emails here.