California Bottle Bill

When California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1013, dubbed the Bottle Bill, in September 2022, he approved an aggressive recycling program for wine and spirits bottles.

The Bottle Bill makes all California wineries and distributors responsible for applying new bottle deposit collection fees from March 1, 2024, as follows:

• For 750ml bottles the CRV is $0.10.
• For bottles 24 oz. or less the CRV is $0.05.
• For direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales, wineries must pay the CRV directly to CalRecycle after assessing the CRV from the bottle purchasers. This applies to all bottles produced by the winery whether eventually sold or not.

In addition to the bottle/container deposit fees, wineries must also pay an additional $0.426 per bottle processing fee to CalRecycle for all the containers they produce.

Consumers can recover this fee by returning bottles to participating retailers or to a recycling center and the Bottle Bill makes it illegal to not accept wine bottles for recycling, imposing a fine of $100 a day for retailers who refuse.

Any wine sold in a winery’s tasting room that is consumed onsite is exempt from Bottle Bill fees and the aforementioned reporting of bottle counts. However, if the sale is ultimately for off-site consumption, the fees for deposits and processing still apply.