SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — You can leave your heart in San Francisco, but now you can’t find a single grocery store or bodega in the city to return your bottles and cans for your nickel or dime CRV deposit.
Consumer Watchdog Logo (PRNewsfoto/Consumer Watchdog)
In a blow to recycling, the state of California has let more than 400 grocery, liquor and other stores in San Francisco out of their obligations to redeem bottles and cans under the pretense that a pilot project, a mobile truck, would pick up the slack. The pilot project is not even up and running.
KGO-TV’s Consumer Reporter Michael Finney broke the story: https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/kgo-sf-abc-getting-your-crv-money-san-francisco
Two redemption centers on the edge of town are now the only places where San Franciscans can claim their CRV deposit.
“San Francisco is the poster child for the failure of convenience in our bottle deposit law and the ineptitude of the government handlers of the system that have allowed fewer and fewer points of return to get your CRV back,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog. “We need Governor Newsom to engage on the issue to create a more convenient recycling system if he wants to live up this pledge of a creating a circular economy.”
For some time, only one redemption center at the outskirts of the city has served San Francisco. Recently, a second location has opened less than a half mile away. Both locations are on the southeast side of the City and serve a population of close to 900,000 residents and businesses. However, with the absence of more centers, grocery and retail stores have had a legal obligation to pick up the slack and allow for consumers to redeem their deposits and return CRV containers in their stores.
That is until July 1, when CalRecycle, the Newsom Administration agency in charge of recycling, let those retailers out of their obligation.
The law requires if there is no redemption center in a “convenience zone,” defined as a half mile radius from a store with annual sales of $2 million dollars, then all stores and dealers that sell CRV products have to take back bottles and cans and redeem nickel and dime CRV deposits that they charged the consumers. Or the stores can opt out and pay $100 a day, $3,000 per month to not have to redeem the CRV cans and bottles.
As of May 2021, the Cal Recycle website listed more than 450 retail stores in San Francisco willing to take back empties and redeem the CRV deposit to consumers. Another, approximately 70 stores opted to pay the $3,000 per month to the state – that’s $210,000 per month. These stores included CVS Pharmacy, Safeway, Trader …….
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/not-single-retail-store-san-004800541.html