Item 07 - OC Grand Jury’s Investigative Report, Findings and Recommendations Regarding “Where Have All the CRVs Gone”

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Where Have All the CRVs Gone? 2021-2022 Orange County Grand Jury Page 10 Meanwhile, unredeemed deposits in the State’s main beverage fund are more than $600 million.21 Curbside haulers in many cities use a single stream method of gathering recyclables. People put their recyclables into one bin and trucks take them to a processing center where machinery sorts the materials. But during transport, the materials are jostled together, rendering at least one quarter of the materials useless because they are contaminated with ground-in bits of organic waste, paper, plastic, and metal. This contamination contributes to increased landfill waste rather than recycling. In California, waste haulers profit in numerous ways: • They receive the CRV value, and the material scrap value of recyclables collected. • Those that process recyclable materials are paid an additional three quarters of one percent, based on the total value of CRV collected, for administrative costs. • They are paid subsidies to compensate for the difference between the cost of recycling and the market scrap value. • They are awarded supplemental payments. California awards “supplemental payments” to operators of curbside programs. These payments were initially created as an incentive to start and support curbside collection programs. Now that most cities have curbside collection programs supported by ratepayers, the supplemental payments are additional profit. 21 Liza Tucker, “State Obscures Extent of a Half-Billion-Dollar Surplus of Unredeemed CRV Deposits as Redemption Rate Stays Stuck at 58 percent,” Consumer Watchdog, February 9, 2022.