Opinion ID: 2680031
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the maine bottle bill

Text: [¶2] Maine’s bottle bill was enacted in 1976. P.L. 1975, ch. 739, § 16 (effective Jan. 1, 1978) (codified as subsequently amended at 32 M.R.S. §§ 1861-1873 (2012)1). The purpose of the legislation, as now codified, is to create incentives for manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and consumers of beverages sold in Maine to reuse or recycle beverage containers to decrease litter and waste. See 32 M.R.S. § 1861(2). [¶3] By statute, most beverage containers sold or offered for sale in Maine “must have a deposit and refund value,” id. §§ 1862(2), 1863-A, with the deposit to be charged to the consumer at the time of sale and refunded upon redemption. See id. §§ 1863-A, 1866. Beverage distributors that sell beverages to dealers for retail sale to consumers in Maine bear the costs of the bottle bill. See id. §§ 1862(5), (7), 1866(3), (4). To comply with their obligations, the distributors pay per-bottle handling fees, established at a statutory minimum rate, to authorized redemption centers. Id. § 1866(4). In exchange, those redemption centers receive empty beverage containers from consumers, refund the consumers’ deposits, and 1 Although these statutes have been amended in some ways since the events that gave rise to these criminal charges, see, e.g., P.L. 2011, ch. 429, §§ 1-6 (effective July 1, 2012, for the amendment to section 1866(4)(C) and Sept. 28, 2011, for all other provisions) (codified at 32 M.R.S. §§ 1865, 1866, 1871-A, 1872 (2012)), those amendments are not relevant here, and we cite to the current codification of the statutes. 3 sort the containers for collection by the distributors or their agents. See id. §§ 1866(3)-(5), 1867. [¶4] During the relevant course of time, the statutory minimum rate for handling fees ranged from three cents per container to three and one-half cents per container, depending on whether the containers were handled subject to a commingling agreement between manufacturers or distributors. See id. §§ 1862(2-A), 1866(4), 1866-D. The separate minimum deposit and refund value has, since the enactment of the bottle bill, been set at five cents for all containers other than wine and spirits containers. See id. § 1863-A(1) to (3). [¶5] Pursuant to the bottle bill, distributors owe a refund to consumers only if the redeemed containers were “originally sold in this State as filled beverage containers.” Id. § 1866(8). To protect against the redemption of containers from beverages sold to consumers outside of Maine, the redemption centers, which act on behalf of the distributors in issuing refunds, must post signs warning that fines may be imposed on those who tender bottles sold outside of Maine. See id. A redemption center is subject to civil penalties, and possibly license revocation, if it tenders to a distributor more than forty-eight containers that it knows or has reason to know were not originally sold in Maine. See id. §§ 1862(11), 1866(8), (9). 4