Methodology

The national trade group's own prediction that doubling Connecticut's deposit to a dime "will raise redemption rates, but also promote bootlegging of lower cost containers into Connecticut and increase fraudulent redemption across state borders," the clearest industry statement tying fraud risk to a deposit increase.

The federal bill sets a $0.10 refund-value floor and gives an administrator discretionary power to raise it for inflation beginning three years after enactment. A discretionary power, not an automatic index, and the bill was never enacted, part of a decades-long pattern of failed federal inflation-adjustment proposals.

California's CRV is 5 cents (under 24 oz) and 10 cents (24 oz and up), plus a 25-cent tier for wine and spirits pouches. Movement comes from a recycling-rate performance trigger, not an inflation index; the statute contains no CPI language.

California's statewide recycling rate was 70% for CY2024, below the program's own 80% statutory goal, amid a decade-long wave of redemption-center closures the state's own analysts tie to a payment structure that does not track operating costs.

Frames a bottle law as "a consumption tax with a recycling rebate": only the unredeemed share behaves like a tax, and the redemption side transfers income to low-wage container collectors, so the net distributional effect is more ambiguous than a flat "regressive tax" charge implies.

State presentation reporting quarterly redemption rates before and after the deposit doubled: 2023 quarters at 38.8/41.1/45.0/50.4 percent, 2024 quarters at 51.9/56.6/70.7/77.3 percent.

Quarter-by-quarter containers sold and redeemed for Connecticut, spanning the January 1, 2024 increase from a nickel to a dime.

The enacted statute that raised Connecticut's minimum refund value from five cents to ten, passed by the legislature in the 2021 session with a January 1, 2024 effective date. A deposit increase carried by a legislature, not a ballot vote.

Norway's operator reports a 93% deposit return rate and a total collection rate above 98% in 2024, at deposits of NOK 2 to 3 (about 22 to 32 US cents), backed by more than 15,000 mandatory retail take-back points.

The Netherlands runs a high deposit (0.15 to 0.25 euro) yet posted plastic-bottle collection of 68% (2022), 74% (2023), and 77% rising to 83% (2024), missing its legal 90% target every year. The Dutch system has no mandatory retailer take-back, the clearest sign that deposit level alone does not guarantee high return.

Maine's first calculated statewide redemption rate: a 74% overall rate for CY2024 (77% on 15-cent containers, 74% on 5-cent containers), from partial self-reported data with disclosed quality caveats. Also states the number of redemption centers "has held steady since 2023" and that the Department proposes no further handling-fee increase.

Program page confirming the 1978 start and the current split: a 15-cent deposit on spirits and wine containers and a 5-cent deposit on beer, hard cider, wine coolers, soda, and noncarbonated water.

The emergency law's own preamble states redemption centers were "struggling to address increased system costs due to inflation and other factors, which have forced many redemption centers to reduce hours or close," and raised the handling fee to 6 cents to "prevent further redemption center closures." Passed 111-7 in the House and 29-1 in the Senate.

The 2023 modernization moved through the Environment and Natural Resources Committee and was signed within about seven weeks of referral. Evidence that bottle-bill changes in Maine are made by the Legislature through the ENR committee, the route this ask would take.

As introduced, LD 2141 would have redirected about $4 million a year of unclaimed deposits to lake-water-quality and farmland-protection funds. A Senate amendment stripped that provision; the bill was enacted April 16, 2026 with "No fiscal impact," as a narrow reporting-enforcement amendment that does nothing about who keeps the money.

Legislative watchdog review. Establishes Maine's program was enacted by referendum in November 1976 and implemented in January 1978, that the State had never calculated an overall redemption rate, the CY2016 tier rates (74.7% non-commingled, 87.2% spirits), the $1,862,941 CY2016 escheat figure, and the count of 449 redemption centers licensed by DEP as of May 2018 (a 2018 figure, not a current one).

Because all initiators of deposit had to join a commingling agreement by October 15, 2024, the direct-to-State escheat filing channel was switched off for nearly the whole initiator population; the last such return covered September 2024. The money that once reached the state treasury now mostly stays inside the industry-run system.

The program's own legislative findings: beverage-container litter and disposal constitute "a great financial burden for the citizens of this State." The state's on-the-record rationale for the bottle bill.

Sets Maine's two-tier deposit: a 5-cent floor for beer, soda, and water containers, and a separate 15-cent floor for wine and spirits containers larger than 50 mL.

Sets the handling fee paid to redemption centers on a stepped statutory schedule, culminating in at least 6 cents per container picked up on or after September 1, 2023. The schedule writes future step-increases directly into statute, an in-state precedent for scheduling a deposit figure forward rather than freezing it.

Governs who keeps unredeemed deposits in Maine. Commingled unclaimed deposits were the property of the commingling group before January 15, 2026 and, once a department-approved plan is implemented, become the property of the industry-run cooperative; only non-commingled, non-exempt initiators remit to the State.

Michigan has run a dime deposit since the 1970s, the highest nominal US deposit, yet its redemption rate fell from about 95% in 2013 to roughly 73% in 2023 (sourcing the chart to the Michigan Department of Treasury). Evidence that a nominal deposit frozen in place loses real value and pull over time.

Often described as indexing Michigan's deposit to inflation. Reading the analysis directly corrects that: the CPI clause attaches to a $60 million a year fund appropriation, not the per-container deposit, which stays "at least 10 cents." The bills are also ballot-gated to November 2026 and not enacted.

In one poll of the same voters, support for raising New York's deposit from a nickel to a dime was a soft 51% to 44%, well below the 71% to 23% support for expanding which containers are covered. Commissioned by an advocacy group, a sponsor caveat worth naming.

Oregon's environmental agency: the 1971 Oregon Bottle Bill was the first in the United States, at a 5-cent deposit, created to address a growing litter problem. The page states a nickel in 1971 held about 28 cents of buying power by 2010.

OLCC's own statutory redemption-rate calculation. The statewide total was 68.26% for 2014 and 64.45% for 2015, the two sub-80% years that triggered Oregon's move to a dime; under the dime, the reported rate has since run around 87 to 88 percent.

Oregon's automatic increase is a one-time performance trigger, not an inflation index: the deposit rose from a nickel to a dime once the return rate stayed below 80% for two years, and cannot re-fire. It stepped up once (effective April 2017) and has no mechanism to move again.

Peer-reviewed: the proportion of containers in coastal debris surveys was about 40% lower in states with container-deposit laws. A built-in check strengthens it, since lids (not covered by deposits) did not show the same drop. Abstract read directly; full text paywalled.

Official monthly Consumer Price Index values, 1971 to 2026. The inflation math is derived directly from this series: 1971 annual average 40.492, 1978 annual average 65.233, July 2026 monthly value 333.918.

State litter surveys read directly: Vermont found a 76% reduction in beverage-container litter, Oregon 72% in year one and 83% in year two. GAO's own math bounds the total-litter effect at 7 to 37 percent depending on beverage containers' share of baseline litter.

The Maine Department of Conservation found beverage-container roadside litter down 69 to 77 percent since the bottle bill. The same report carries the honest counterexample: in Michigan, total litter by item count rose even as beverage-container litter fell 85 to 90 percent, because other litter categories grew.

Government confirmation that Germany's single-use deposit is a legal minimum of 0.25 euro per container (about 29 US cents at the September 2026 exchange rate, so slightly above a US quarter, not below).

The cleanest question found on raising an existing deposit: given the options, 38.9% of Iowans wanted to keep the nickel, 33.5% wanted to raise it, and 22.3% wanted it gone. Raising the deposit was a minority position, while expanding container coverage polled higher in the same survey.

Summarizes Congressional Management Foundation findings that a personalized constituent message, with the sender's own words and local stake, carries more weight than an identical form letter. About 90% of staff credit an individualized message with a lot or some influence; a personal sentence is what makes it land.

Reports Maine DEP's own estimate of about $16 million a year in unclaimed redemptions statewide. A secondary relay of a primary agency estimate, not the outlet's own calculation.

Catalogs the federal bottle-bill proposals from 2003 to 2023 (Jeffords 2003, Markey 2007 and 2009, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act), several of which proposed inflation-adjustable deposits. None became law.

After Connecticut doubled its deposit to a dime, the state's Department of Revenue Services found roughly 12% of wholesalers over-redeemed in 2025 and about $11.3 million in losses, with a reported redemption rate near 97% that itself signals cross-border fraud. Lawmakers passed an enforcement fix in 2026.

Reports the German Federal Environment Agency's own estimate of a 96% return rate for single-use containers in the deposit system. The commonly repeated "98%" traces to the industry operator's non-transparent methodology; 96%, and even that is contested, is the honest figure.

Account of the 2019 hearing on LD 575 (a nickel-to-dime bill that died in committee). Sen. Heather Sanborn, owner of a Maine brewery, argued a higher Maine-only deposit would disadvantage beer brewed in Maine but sold out of state. The article also reports Maine's bottle-bill return rate at 75 to 87 percent against a statewide recycling rate of 36.79 percent.

A study by an organization with a documented history of beverage-industry funding and bottle-bill opposition, whose own numbers still show deposit-covered litter about half as common in bottle-bill states (4.12 vs 8.45 items per capita) as in non-bottle-bill states, a much larger gap than for non-deposit litter (111 vs 158).

The distributor trade group's own account: Maine has "the highest handling fee in the country," consumers pay about $45 million a year in handling fees, distributors process 847 million containers and pay $50 million a year in handling fees, and the unclaimed-deposit pool (which the group put at about $11.9 million) funds the industry's own cost of running the system.

A pro-deposit platform's compilation of national return rates and deposit values, cross-checked here against each operator's own report. Germany's ~98% figure is flagged by Reloop itself as the industry operator's non-transparent self-report. Also gives return-rate medians rising with deposit value across many jurisdictions, a correlation, not a controlled experiment.

A pro-deposit platform's reanalysis of 2023 coastal-cleanup data: bottles and cans averaged 5.2% of litter in deposit states vs 10.2% in non-deposit states. Its own deposit-level (dime vs nickel) comparison is a two-state point with heavily overlapping ranges, too thin to support a deposit-level litter gradient.