Maryland Needs a Bottle Bill Now!
HB 331 / SB 342 Maryland Recycling Refund and Litter Reduction Program
HB331/SB342 Maryland Recycling Refund and Litter Reduction Program was re-introduced by Delegate Terrasa in the House and crossfiled by Senator Brooks in the Senate for Maryland General Assembly Session 2026. This legislation would create a modern beverage container recycling refund (also known as a “bottle bill”) in Maryland.
What is a bottle bill? A bottle bill will create a system in Maryland where consumers who purchase sealed beverages will pay a refundable 10 cent deposit on most beverage containers at the time of purchase. When they have finished consuming the beverage, the consumer can return the empty container to the store or to a redemption center and get the entire deposit back. The consumer may even bring it back to the same store they purchased it when they go back. The system is funded by the producers of the beverages to pay for the program, effective oversight, and a small handling fee to offset any expenses for the retailers who accept beverage containers for redemption.
Currently, local governments and taxpayers fund our curbside recycling, trash service, and litter cleanup programs. The bottle bill would remove materials from these other programs, thus saving local governments money.
Bottle bills are proven policies to reduce litter. A cash incentive to recycle helps overcome one of the most challenging aspects of local recycling programs — collection of containers, and especially the collection and recycling of containers from beverages consumed away from home or on-the-go. These containers are otherwise likely to end up as litter or discarded in the trash. Our local governments and waste management programs can’t recycle what they can’t collect from consumers, even with the most state of the art recycling facility.
Ten U.S. states have bottle bills in place, and the most effective reach container redemption rates approaching 90% and have ~half the litter compared to non-bottle bill states. HB331/SB342 is a modern bottle bill designed to maximize consumer convenience and container recovery by bringing together the most effective components of bottle bills from around the US and the world. Currently, redeemable beverage containers make up more than 50% of the litter Marylanders find in cleanups and trash traps. Maryland’s bottle bill is designed to reach 90% container recovery rates (meaning 90% of redeemable beverage containers sold in Maryland will be returned for recycling), suggesting that litter in trash traps could be reduced by nearly half! That’s a stunning result from a policy that is budget neutral for the state government. Bottle bills are a type of producer responsibility, i.e., the bottle bill is designed to shift financial responsibility for beverage container waste from the local governments and taxpayers who currently fund it to the producers who make and sell it. Bottle bills can save local governments litter cleanup and trash disposal expenses.
The General Assembly will hold hearings on the bottle bill next week. The Senate Education, Energy, and Environment Committee will have a hearing on SB 342 on Tuesday, February 10th, at 1:00pm. Testimony is due on Friday, February 6th, and must be uploaded to the Maryland General Assembly website between 8am-6pm on Friday. The House Environment and Transportation Committee hearing on HB331 will take place on Wednesday, February 11th, at 1:00pm. Testimony for the House hearing is due on Monday, February 9th, between 8am-6pm.
We’ll keep posting on how you can help the bottle bill advance this year. Last year, the bottle bill was passed favorably out of the House Environment and Transportation Committee and then it languished in the House Economic Matters Committee without a vote before the end of session. You can help demonstrate support for the bottle bill now by:
submitting “FAVORABLE” written testimony
contact your State Senator or Delegate and urge them to pass the bottle bill out of committee and chamber
contact the Governor’s office to tell him you support a bottle bill now to reduce litter and cut microplastic pollution sources
post pictures on social media of the beverage container litter you find with hashtags #MDBottleBill #MDGA26 #MDGA26BottleBillNow
keep following us to be ready for action alerts and keep positive pressure on our representatives to pass a bottle bill this year!
Your message to legislators and the Governor’s office can be simple. Just say that you “support the bottle bill” and hope they will, too. Or you can add your experiences with litter and why an effective litter source reduction policy like a bottle bill is important to you.
Here is a fact sheet with some additional information about the bottle bill: Bottle Bill Fact Sheet
The picture above shows the nearly 2,000 littered beverage containers found in just one dumpster from Professor Trash Wheel. Adding a cash incentive to return empty containers like these for recycling would have prevented most of these from ever ending up in Baltimore’s waterways.
