The California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act, a violation of which is a crime, requires a distributor of beverage containers, as defined, to pay to the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery a monthly redemption payment for every beverage container sold or transferred, as provided. The act requires the department to deposit those amounts into the California Beverage Container Recycling Fund. The fund is continuously appropriated to, among other things, pay refund values and administrative fees to processors that receive empty beverage containers from recyclers. The act continuously appropriates $60,000,000 annually from the fund to the department to make market development payments to glass beverage container manufacturers who purchase recycled glass collected within this state for use in manufacturing new beverage containers in this state.
This bill would authorize the department, subject to the availability of funds, to pay a market development payment to a container manufacturer who produces new glass wine bottles in this state that are intended to be sold to a beverage manufacturer in California. The bill would require, upon appropriation by the Legislature, the department to use unallocated funds from the $60,000,000 continuously appropriated to the department to make market development payments to glass beverage container manufacturers to pay the glass wine bottle market development payment, not to exceed $200 per ton and 25,000 tons per year per manufacturer.