By Cole Rosengren, Waste Dive
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed an expansion to the state’s bottle bill that supporters say will bolster a struggling system of redemption centers.
SB 353, sponsored by state Sen. Bill Dodd, directs CalRecycle to update the formula it uses for processing payments to redemption centers. To calculate values, the system currently uses a 12-month average of scrap values from the prior year, with a minimum three-month lag.
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“This undermines the economic viability of centers at times when payments do not compensate centers enough if scrap prices quickly drop, resulting in shortfalls,” said the Container Recycling Institute, a supporter of SB 353, in a statement thanking Newsom for signing the bill into law.
Now, CalRecycle will use a formula that bases processing payments on average scrap values from the prior three months. CRI anticipates this will help more redemption centers stay in business after the state has seen more than half of its locations close in the last 10 years.
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