A new interactive map will help Iowans find bottle and can redemption centers near them. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
The Iowa Beverage Association is trying to encourage Iowans to return their empty beverage bottles and cans for recycling and collect their nickel deposit by helping them find places to return their containers.
The association has launched a new website that allows Iowans to type in their city or zip code and find the closest bottle and can redemption centers.
Iowa’s bottle bill, as it is called, is nothing new. Since 1979, consumers have been charged a deposit on glass, plastic and aluminum beverage containers, which can be redeemed, for 5 cents a container, by returning the container to a designated redemption center.
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Jon Murphy, the Iowa Beverage Association’s executive director, said the redemption system “is the best way” for distributors to get the bottling materials back.
“Every can is made to be remade, is what we say,” Murphy said. “So we need it to go through the recycling system in order to get back into the can production system, so we can continue to make more cans and bottles for our products.”
In 2022, Iowa lawmakers altered the law to allow some stores to opt out of redemption services, which may have changed some Iowans’ participation in the program, if their regular drop-off spot opted out.
The law also stipulated that a digital account of redemption centers be made available to the public. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which is the regulating agency for the program, hosts a list of redemption centers on its website, but Murphy said his team wanted to take it a step further.
“No Iowan is going to the DNR’s website, and searching out a spreadsheet for where the closest redemption location is,” Murphy said. “It’s just not as user friendly as it could be, so we took what was conceptualized in the legislation, and created it.”
Murphy said Empties.org is continually updated and shows more than 300 redemption centers in Iowa, including the retail stores that continue to offer the service.
The beverage industry is a very competitive market, Murphy said, but distributors are “united in their desire to bring more access to Iowa’s bottle redemption system.”
Some rural areas, according to the interactive site, are more than 15 miles away from the nearest redemption service. Prior to the 2022 update to the law, any store that sold alcoholic or carbonated beverages was required to collect containers and redeem the deposits.
According to a Container Recycling Institute report for the DNR in 2022, 49% of beverage containers were recovered, however this recovery rate reflects containers that were returned directly to a redemption center and those that were picked up via curbside recycling.
Iowa is one of 10 states with a bottle bill, all of which saw a decline in participation of redemption services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Hopefully people will read this, check out empties.org, and get back in the habit of taking back their bottles and cans,” Murphy said.
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