Ten U.S. states have bottle deposit laws by state statute: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont.1National Conference of State Legislatures. State Beverage Container Deposit Laws Guam runs a deposit system as well. If you buy a covered beverage in one of these places, you pay a small deposit at checkout and get it back when you return the empty container. There is no federal bottle bill, so containers bought anywhere else carry no deposit and cannot be redeemed for cash.
How Much You Get Back Per Container
Most deposit states pay five cents per container, but the amounts have been climbing and vary by state and beverage type.1National Conference of State Legislatures. State Beverage Container Deposit Laws
- Michigan and Oregon: ten cents on covered containers.
- Connecticut: ten cents.
- Maine and Vermont: five cents on most beverages, fifteen cents on wine and liquor.
- California: five cents under 24 ounces, ten cents at 24 ounces and above, and twenty-five cents for wine and spirits sold in bags, boxes, or pouches.
- Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York: five cents.
You can read the deposit off the container itself. Look for a list of state abbreviations followed by the cent value, printed on the label or embossed on the can. A marking like “OR 10¢” or “VT 5¢” tells you exactly what each state will pay. Retailers collect the deposit as a separate line item at checkout, and the money sits with distributors or a state fund until you redeem the container.
Higher deposits pull more containers back. Oregon’s redemption rate climbed from roughly 64 percent to 90 percent within two years after it doubled the deposit to ten cents in 2017. Michigan’s ten-cent deposit has long produced a return rate around 70 percent. Massachusetts, still at five cents, sits around 35 percent, the lowest among deposit states.
Which Containers Carry a Deposit
Deposit laws cover aluminum cans, glass bottles, and PET plastic bottles used for beverages meant for immediate consumption. Soda, beer, and malt beverages are covered in every deposit state. Most states also include bottled water, and a growing number cover sports drinks, flavored teas, and coffee drinks. Juice sits in a gray area: some states include all juices, others exclude them based on fruit content or sugar level, and a few leave them out.
Wine and spirits are shifting. California added wine and distilled spirits to its program on January 1, 2024, and California Refund Value labeling becomes mandatory for those products on July 1, 2026. Maine and Vermont have charged fifteen cents on wine and liquor bottles for years. Most other deposit states still exclude them.
What Isn’t Covered
Not every recyclable container earns a refund, and knowing the exclusions saves you a wasted trip:
- Milk and dairy containers are exempt in every deposit state.
- Infant formula and medicinal drinks are excluded in most states.
- Food jars, including pickles, pasta sauce, and salsa, never carry a deposit regardless of material.
- In most states, wine and spirits bottles still belong in curbside recycling rather than at a redemption center.
The simple test: if the container has no deposit value printed on it, it belongs in curbside recycling.
How To Return Containers for a Refund
You have three practical ways to redeem, and which one works best depends on how many containers you have and how much sorting you want to do.
Reverse Vending Machines
Most people use a reverse vending machine near the entrance of a grocery store. You feed containers in one at a time, the machine scans the barcode, and it compacts or crushes each container so it can’t be redeemed again. A receipt prints when you’re finished, and you exchange it for cash or apply it to your grocery bill inside the store. When a machine rejects a container because the barcode won’t scan, the service counter will usually process it by hand.
Manual Redemption Centers
Dedicated redemption centers and some retail service counters accept containers by hand. Staff count, verify, and pay out in cash or store credit. This route is useful for damaged containers that machines reject and for smaller loads where you’d rather not wait at a machine.
Bag-Drop Accounts
Oregon’s BottleDrop program uses an account model that skips the sorting entirely. You register a free account, buy green bags (about two dollars for a roll of ten), fill each bag with mixed deposit containers, tag it with an account sticker, and drop it at a participating location. The containers are counted and credited to your account within about a week, minus a small processing fee. You can withdraw the balance as cash or convert it to store credit at participating retailers for a 20-percent bonus, which raises the effective value from ten cents to twelve cents per container.
Retailer Rules That Affect Your Return
Retailers in deposit states generally have to accept returns of the container types they sell. If a store stocks a particular brand of soda, it must provide a way to take that brand’s empties back. Some states apply this only to stores above a certain square footage; others apply it broadly.
When a Store Can Turn You Away
Stores can legally refuse containers that create health or identification problems:
- Contaminated bottles containing mold, chemicals, or anything beyond ordinary residue.
- Containers so crushed or damaged the brand can’t be identified.
- Containers with no valid deposit marking for that state.
- Brands the store doesn’t carry.
Daily Return Limits
Most states let retailers cap how many containers one person can return per day. New York sets a floor of 240 containers, and stores must allow unlimited returns with 48 hours’ advance notice.2New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Bottle and Can Deposit Returns Oregon lets stores above 5,000 square feet cap at 144 containers per person per day, and smaller stores can limit to 50. If you’re bringing in a large load, call ahead or plan to spread it across visits.
Don’t Redeem Out-of-State Containers
The gap between deposit and non-deposit states tempts some people to buy beverages where there’s no deposit and redeem the empties across the border. It’s illegal everywhere it’s tried, and penalties scale sharply with volume.
In Michigan, returning 25 to 100 out-of-state containers carries a fine of up to $100. Between 100 and 10,000 containers, the charge becomes a misdemeanor with fines up to $1,000 and up to 93 days in jail. At 10,000 or more, it’s a felony with penalties reaching $5,000 and five years in prison. Maine and Massachusetts allow civil fines of $100 per container or $25,000 per batch, whichever is greater. New York treats violations as a public nuisance and can assess $500 per day.
Modern reverse vending machines also use image recognition, barcode verification, and motion-tracking sensors to catch containers that have already been redeemed or labels stuck onto ineligible objects. Between the technology and the criminal exposure, the math doesn’t work.