The Michigan Department of Treasury has good news for Michigan residents missing the sticky, clanking confines of the neighborhood bottle return room, currently closed due to the coronavirus.
Beginning on June 15, some retailers must reopen their bottle return facilities, the department announced Monday. The reopening applies to stores with bottle return facilities housed at the front of the store or in separated areas and serviced by reverse vending machines, meaning they require little person-to-person contact.
Retailers can limit bottle return hours, limit returns to $25 per customer per day, limit the number of available machines, and periodically close facilities for cleaning if needed. They are asked to limit returns to 140% of their average weekly collection volume from April and May of last year.
In a release, the Department of Treasury said it would issue more guidance about resuming bottle returns in the near future.
Assuming monthly averages from 2018, nearly $60 million in uncollected returnable deposits -- that’s nearly 6 million bottles and cans -- have accumulated in Michigan garages, closets and storage sheds since Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed her first stay-home order March 23 restricting unnecessary business activity. There was nearly $394 million in deposits charged and $350 million collected in 2018, based on the most recent publicly available figures released by the state Treasury, the agency overseeing the bottler deposit program.
Whitmer spokesperson Tiffany Brown said last week the governor’s office was reviewing the reopening of bottle returns.
During the period where retailers did not accept bottle returns, stores were still collecting the 10-cent deposit.
Michigan Retailers Association Vice President Amy Drumm said her organization, which represents nearly 5,000 businesses, would temporarily suspend charging bottle deposits but he state has said it’s not possible without changing the state’s Bottle Deposit Law.
“When containers are returned, there would be no realistic way to distinguish between a can that had a deposit charged on it when it was sold and one that did not,” she said.
In an interview last week she said retailers feared being overloaded with a backlog of returnables when the can sorting machines turn back on.
Drumm said it’s expected to “take a year or more to catch up on the volume that’s currently in peoples’ homes.”
If residents give up on storing and returning their bottles and cans and instead begin recycling them -- or throwing them away, which is illegal -- it means more money would go into the state government’s pockets.
The way Michigan’s system works: Manufacturers and distributors charge retailers, who then charge customers 10 cents per container. Retailers refund customers for their empty returnables and send them back to distributors. By year’s end, distributors often have charged more in deposit than cans or bottles that have been returned by the public.
This difference of unclaimed deposits, known as the escheat, is passed along to the state Treasury and 75% of it stays there to be spent on environmental efforts. The remaining 25% is distributed to retailers to offset bottle-return service costs.
In 2018, Michigan residents cashed in 89% of returnables, leaving nearly $43 million in deposits unclaimed.
Of 10 states that have bottle deposits, only Michigan stopped the service entirely. Some states suspended enforcement of their programs, giving retailers the option to reject returnables. Others have regional “redemption centers," locations designated specifically for bottle deposit returns, that remained open, even if in-store bottle return services were shut down.
“Michigan is the only state, and I think the only place in the world, where redemption was shut down entirely,” said Susan Collins, president of the California-based Container Recycling Institute. “It’s definitely the most extreme situation.”
The Container Recycling Institute has tracked the various responses by states to returnables throughout the coronavirus pandemic and said concerns over spread of the virus through handling of cans and bottles weren’t the primary reason for stoppages.
“All stores for many years have had very strict health and safety protocols in place, so (employees) are always wearing gloves and not touching the materials,” Collins said. “If you look at the actual executive orders from different states, the language said the number one reason was to provide relief to the grocery stores because they were short-staffed.”
States that have resumed deposit redemption are marking floors to maintain social distancing and placing dividers between automated return machines, among other precautions, Collins said.
However, Jenny Sherman, a manager at Jack’s Fruit Market in Thomas Township, part of a regional chain, said last week she believes people are hesitant to accept bottle returns because of coronavirus concerns, not staffing issues.
“I think people are just generally concerned about taking things from people right now,” Sherman said, referencing the reluctance of many retailers to accept any returned items during the pandemic. “The people who come and pick up our bottles, like Pepsi, Coke, Fabiano Brothers, are not accepting them, so we can’t take them from customers.”
Tom Emmerich, the chief operating officer of Kalamazoo-based Schupan and Sons, a scrap metal business that has contracts to collect returnables from major retailers, said his company submitted a phased-in plan to the governor for reintroducing bottle return services safely.
“If they adhere to the (Centers for Disease Control) guidelines and the state guidelines, the process can be done very safely,” Emmerich said last week. “We will work with each individual retail store in phase 1 and help them know what their limits are so they can properly manage the flow in their store.”
Emmerich said the collection companies can handle about 140% of a store’s average monthly returnable volume to help catch up on the backlog.
Even though it’s the average Coke, Pepsi, beer and other beverage consumers who paid their deposit and can’t return their empties who are immediately impacted by the stoppage, Emmerich and Collins agree the deposit stoppage has disrupted packaging and metal industries.
Nearly 50% of every aluminum beverage can is manufactured with recycled materials, Collins said, and 40% of that recycled material comes from the 10 states with a bottle deposit program. A similar shortage exists with glass due to the shutdowns, she said.
When companies are forced to instead use non-recycled materials, Collins said it requires hotter ovens and more melting of raw materials, which translates to more energy use and greater pollution.
“Every time we do save energy, we’re saving air, as well,” she said, “because most of the forms of producing energy are producing pollution, as well.”
Michigan bottle deposit data, 1990-2018:
COVID-19 PREVENTION TIPS
In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus.
Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible.
Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.
Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.
More on MLive:
Cans pile up during stay-home order
Michigan piles up $50M in returnables
Michigan Secretary of State offices to reopen June 1 by appointment only
Michigan Court of Appeals orders Owosso barber’s shop to close
Michigan shopping malls, retail stores weigh risk of opening doors during COVID-19 pandemic
Thursday, May 28: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan