Just a curious question about Michigan's can and bottle recycle law

[bluestateguy]

I've only lived here for a month and a half.

Do the rich people in places like, say Bloomfield Hills, take their bottles and cans back for redemption? I'm wondering if maybe one reason why the state has this law is because they figure the rich people don't bother to take the bottles back, thereby giving the state some extra revenue to pocket.

[erinlough]

1. Some people don't, but I think most everyone does regardless

of socioeconomic level. The idea behind it was supposedly to clean up the highways and yet, it was a brilliant plan to raise state revenue. I like it, it seems like a forced recycle plan to me. I had a father working at "Continental Can Company" during the debate, everyone thought it would ruin sales and be disasterous. It is a workable plan if a tad inconvienient.

[Lefty48197]

2. It's not extra revenue for the state.

The retailers and wholesalers both charge their customers ten cents per bottle/can. The issue came up several years ago, as to who would get the "profits". It turns out that an extraordinary percentage of the deposit bottles/cans never get returned for redemption. The number was amazing, something like 10% if I recall correctly. The question was: Who would get the extra 10%, the retailers, or the wholesalers? I think they wound up splitting the difference. The only thing the state of Michigan ever got out of the deal was cleaner roadways. We need to expand the law to include the non-carbonated single serving drink containers that are currently not covered by the "bottle bill".

[TahitiNut]

3. Returnable container drives replace newspaper drives

... as fund-raising for youth groups and church groups. The more affluent communities (not the most) tend to do well, with householders actually delivering them to parking lots instead of forcing the little princes and princesses to actually go door to door. In the older, starter home middle class communities they go door-to-door but there's a limit to the number of times they can go to that well. Too often and the second one comes up dry.

A lot of the 10% that don't get redeemed are the result of labels that get soaked off in the cooler and other such reasons to trash 'em instead of recycle 'em.