AB 178

Bill Subjects

Abstract

(1) Under existing law, the California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act, every beverage container sold or offered for sale in this state is required to have a minimum refund value. A distributor is required to pay a redemption payment for every beverage container sold or offered for sale in the state to the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery for deposit in the California Beverage Container Recycling Fund. The money in the fund is continuously appropriated to the department for, among other things, the payment of refund values. The act defines the term "beverage" for purposes of the act to include certain types of products in liquid, ready-to-drink form, as specified. The act excludes from the definition of "beverage," among other products, any product sold in a container that is not an aluminum beverage container, a glass container, a plastic beverage container, or a bimetal container. This bill would eliminate reference to the material from which a beverage container is made in defining the terms "beverage" and "beverage container." Because redemption payments for the previously excluded beverage container material types made subject to the act by this bill would be deposited in a continuously appropriated fund, the bill would make an appropriation. (2) The act defines "other beverage container" as a beverage container which has a body consisting of metal, glass, plastic, other materials, or a combination of these, but which is not an aluminum, bimetal, glass, or plastic beverage container. The act requires any person importing into the state more than 25 pounds of empty aluminum, bimetal, or plastic beverage container material, or more than 250 pounds of empty glass beverage container material, among other requirements, to report the material to the department and to provide certain documentation, including the destination of the material. This bill would subject to those requirements a person importing into the state more than 25 pounds of other empty beverage container material. (3) The act requires the department to calculate a processing fee and processing payment for each beverage container type with a scrap value less than the cost of recycling. The act requires the processing payment to be at least equal to the difference between the scrap value offered to a statistically significant sample of recyclers by willing purchasers and the sum of the actual cost of recycling containers by certified recycling centers and a reasonable financial return. This bill would, for purposes of calculating the processing payment, exclude certified curbside programs from the sampling of recyclers. (4) The act requires a processor to pay to a certified recycling center, dropoff or collection program, or curbside program for all types of empty beverage containers received by the processor the refund value, 34 of 1% of the refund value for administrative costs, and the processing payment. This bill would prohibit a processor from making those payments for a load of empty beverage containers, or a commingled load of empty beverage containers and other containers of the same material type, if more than 5% of the load is made up of material other than empty beverage containers of one material type and other containers of the same material type. (5) This bill would also make conforming changes. (6) A violation of the act is a crime. This bill would impose a state-mandated local program by creating new crimes relating to beverage containers. (7) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.