Advocacy group urges end of San Francisco program

Los Angeles-based organization Consumer Watchdog has issued a statement urging San Francisco Mayor London Breed to “pull the plug on the failed San Francisco recycling BottleBank pilot program."

The program bypasses retail stores as participants in the California deposit return system (DRS) and instead sets up mobile sites in different parts of San Francisco where residents can drop off empty bottles and cans and receive their returned deposit fees.

Calling the program “a flop,” Consumer Watchdog is urging the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) to cut off any funding sustaining it.

In a letter sent to Breed and CalRecycle, Consumer Watchdog says it has written “to ensure that CalRecycle ends the San Francisco BottleBank pilot as of Jan. 1, 2025, because it has failed to provide San Franciscans with convenient access to get back their CRV [California Refund Value] bottle and can deposits.

“The moment this pilot became operational in 2021, it served to excuse 400 retail stores from taking CRV containers back in store and from refunding deposits for 850,000 San Franciscans. Instead, three trucks rotate between more than 20 parking lots where redemption is offered for three or four hours per week, mainly during weekdays.”

According to Consumer Watchdog, San Francisco County’s redemption rate of direct consumer returns of deposit containers stands at under 40 percent, compared with an overall 58 percent rate in California.

The group says the gap would be wider without activities at the Our Planet Recycling center in San Francisco, which it says is responsible for about 90 percent of the existing redemption rate in the city. Our Planet Recycling runs the Bottle Bank pilot program, says Consumer Watchdog, but has not attracted the same amount of activity at the mobile sites.

“Between January 2022 and April 2024, this pilot has attracted only 7,000 BottleBank subscribers out of a city of 850,000,” the group says. “It costs the pilot 41 cents to hand back a nickel to a consumer.

“CalRecycle should under no circumstances extend or increase state payments of any kind to the San Francisco BottleBank pilot. As of Jan. 1, 2025, retailers of sufficient size will have to take containers back in store themselves and refund deposits in places with insufficient recycling centers, or they can form a cooperative to offer redemption service as they see fit.”

Consumer Watchdog says it is “a voice for American consumers in an era when special interests dominate public discourse, government and politics.”