Body
Connecticut lawmakers on Thursday passed an emergency bill aimed at curbing what state officials describe as fraudulent bottle and can redemptions tied to returns coming in from out of state. The measure, Senate Bill 299, escalates enforcement, increases penalties for violators, and tightens oversight for redemption centers, lawmakers said as the bill heads to Gov. Ned Lamont.
In legislative debate, House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said his support for increasing Connecticut’s bottle deposit to 10 cents was driven by recycling goals, including the 2021 passage of the bottle bill and subsequent changes. Ritter said that after the state raised the value of its own bottle deposits to 10 cents in 2024, officials were caught off guard by what he described as a surge in fraudulent returns. He also said the volume of bottles and cans being redeemed in Connecticut has been far beyond the scale suggested by a simple neighborhood drop-off pattern.
Ritter said the legislature’s response reflects the political and financial pressure that distributors face from those excess returns. Under the bottle deposit structure described in the bill’s discussion, beverage distributors initiate the redemption process by collecting an additional 10 cents on every eligible bottle and can, then must pay the money back—plus a handling fee—when the containers are returned to stores or redemption centers.
Senate Bill 299 would increase fines for violating the bottle bill law from $50 to $500 on a first offense. For third and subsequent offenses, the proposed penalty would rise from $250 to $2,000, and the bill would treat those repeat violations as a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison.
The legislation also would change how redemption centers operate. Under the bill, redemption centers would have to be licensed by the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, with the added expectation that they keep records of anyone seeking to redeem more than 1,000 bottles and cans in a single day. The bill would also narrow the daily redemption limit for individuals or businesses not affiliated with a qualified nonprofit, setting the cap at 4,000 bottles and cans per day, down from 5,000.
Officials supporting the bill said it is difficult to track exactly how much of the roughly 2 billion containers redeemed in the state last year may have been illegally brought in from other states, in part because many products lack identifying markings tied to where they were sold. State Rep. John-Michael Parker, D-Madison, co-chairs the Environment Committee and said there is no way to tell right now without better labeling, and he suggested that products could be printed with a Connecticut-specific barcode or similar feature.
Supporters also said the bill seeks to address large-scale redemption operations by prompting some larger centers to adopt automated scanning technologies, such as reverse vending machines. The bill would temporarily lower the handling fee paid on each processed beverage container as an incentive for those centers to use the equipment.
The measure drew bipartisan support, and lawmakers said it passed the Senate on Wednesday and the House on Thursday before being sent to Lamont. Republicans, however, criticized the approach as a temporary fix that does not address the underlying cause, with House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, describing the switch to 10-cent deposits as an “unmitigated disaster.” Candelora said he believes out-of-state redemption centers have been offloading inventory in Connecticut rather than recycling in normal channels, arguing the scale indicates an organized operation.
The bill’s proponents pointed to distributor losses that they said grew after the deposit increase. Connecticut’s Department of Revenue Services reported that nearly 12% of wholesalers in 2025 said they had to pay out more redemptions than they collected in deposits, and that losses totaled $11.3 million. Peter Gallo, vice president of Star Distributors in West Haven, said his company’s losses alone have exceeded $2 million since the 10-cent deposit change took effect two years ago and that the deficit has continued to grow.
Not all redemption operators backed the bill. Francis Bartolomeo, owner of Fran’s Cans and Bart’s Bottles in Watertown, said he learned about the legislation only on Monday from another redemption center owner and that he has been contacting legislators to oppose it, including his frustration that there was no public hearing. Bartolomeo also said one of his concerns was the $2,500 annual licensing fee the bill would place on redemption centers, arguing that while out-of-state redemptions are a problem, the state should instead improve enforcement rather than penalizing redemption businesses.
Lynn Little of New Milford Redemption Center supported increasing penalties but said the long-term solution should involve better labeling by distributors, adding that she is frustrated by volume caps set after the state provided grants to residents to open redemption businesses. Ritter said he opposed moving back to a 5-cent deposit and said he viewed that earlier figure as a recycling strategy, but he argued the current situation has become untenable and warned that the state could face a lawsuit from distributors if the dispute escalates.