Update the Bottle Bill, Mass!

The Surfrider Foundation MA Chapter is part of a coalition advocating for a substantive and long overdue update to Massachusetts’ 1983 bottle deposit law.

UPDATE: July 2024

In June of 2024, the Massachusetts Senate passed a strong climate bill to help the state reach its goal of net zero emissions by 2050.  The bill, S.2829, aims to bolster Massachusetts’ clean energy transition. Thanks to community advocacy across the state, including that of Plastic Free Mass coalition, the bill also includes an amendment to the current bottle deposit law by changing the five-cent bottle deposit to 10 cents and expanding it to include most drink containers; encouraging recycling with greater efficiency. 

The climate bill is now set to be heard by the House in July. Please check back for updates to see how you can get involved with ensuring this bill and bottle bill amendment is passed successfully in the House. 

See below for background: 

This campaign continues the MA Chapter’s long-standing advocacy on this issue, which dates back to a 2014 campaign focused on passing a bottle bill expansion via ballot referendum.

While Surfrider MA acknowledges recycling is an incomplete and imperfect solution to waste and plastic pollution, a well-designed deposit program is an effective known tool for increasing the circularity of beverage containers, promoting reuse, and for holding producers responsible for responsibly handling the packaging that they produce. For example, Germany’s Pfand system has achieved a beverage container returns rate of >98%.

Several bills have been filed on this topic in the 193^rd General Court, including H.3690, S.2104, and H.3676. While these bills vary in their details, they generally improve the existing bottle bill by:

• Increasing the container deposit from 5 cents to 10 cents, with a mechanism for future increases based on explicitly defined goals for the return rate of containers.
• Significantly expanding the types of beverage containers covered by bottle deposits in MA
• Assigning funds from unredeemed containers to improving solid waste management and environmental protection

The Surfrider MA chapter also supports versions of the bills that include measures promoting a transition to reusable/refillable containers and to exclude incineration and other high-temperature chemical processes from the definition of ‘recycling’.

These bills are scheduled for a series of hearings before the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy on 28 June 2023. The MA chapter intends to supply written testimony asking the committee to support these bills.