Rite Aid, a well-known pharmacy chain known for its one-stop shop for snacks, toiletries, and prescriptions, has announced the closure of 44 stores as part of its restructuring process after filing for bankruptcy last year. The latest 44 stores are located in Ohio and Michigan. Rite Aid is also planning to close 27 more locations, including 31 stores in California, according to a court filing.
The closures are expected to help budget-conscious shoppers find cheaper prescriptions, especially if they live near a warehouse club. The company has marked 31 stores in California for closure in its restructuring plan, which was filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of California on October 16.
Rite Aid is planning to close 10 additional stores, adding to the number of stores the company has closed since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last October. The bankruptcy court filing showed which locations are on the list.
Rite Aid Pharmacy 06013 is open today until 9:00 PM and offers services such as Handicapped Accessible, Durable Medical Equipment, Medicaid, Delivery, and more. The pharmacy is open today until 10:00 PM.
Rite Aid is also planning to close 53 more store locations, adding to the roughly 200 it has shuttered since filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last October. The pharmacy offers services such as Handicapped Accessible, Durable Medical Equipment, Medicaid, and Delivery.
For those interested in scheduling a free flu shot, Rite Aid is open today until 10:00 PM.
📹 Family Accused of Running the Kramer-Newman Bottle Return Scam
The alleged numbers are huge. https://www.lehtoslaw.com.
What is the Rite Aid scandal?
The government’s complaint alleges that, from May 2014 through June 2019, Rite Aid knowingly dispensed at least hundreds of thousands of unlawful prescriptions for controlled substances that lacked a legitimate medical purpose and were not issued in the usual course of professional practice and/or were not valid prescriptions, were not for a medically accepted indication or were medically unnecessary. These unlawful prescriptions included, for example, prescriptions for the dangerous, highly diverted combination of drugs known as “the trinity,” prescriptions for excessive quantities of opioids, such as highly addictive oxycodone and fentanyl, and prescriptions issued by prescribers who Rite Aid pharmacists had repeatedly identified internally as suspicious and as writing unlawful, unnecessary prescriptions. The government further alleges that Rite Aid filled these prescriptions despite clear “red flags,” which highly indicated the prescriptions were unlawful and which pharmacists are trained to recognize. Rite Aid also allegedly ignored substantial evidence that its stores were dispensing unlawful prescriptions, including specific concerns raised by its pharmacists, and intentionally deleted internal notes about suspicious prescribers written by Rite Aid pharmacists, such as “writing excessive dose(s) for oxycodone,” and “DO NOT FILL CONTROLS.” By knowingly dispensing unlawful prescriptions for controlled substances, the government alleges that Rite Aid violated the CSA and, where Rite Aid sought reimbursement from federal healthcare programs, also violated the FCA.
Along with Rite Aid Corporation, the government’s complaint names as defendants the following Rite Aid subsidiaries: Rite Aid Hdqtrs Corp.; Rite Aid of Connecticut Inc.; Rite Aid of Delaware Inc.; Rite Aid of Maryland; Rite Aid of Michigan; Rite Aid of New Hampshire; Rite Aid of New Jersey; Rite Aid of Ohio; Rite Aid of Pennsylvania and Rite Aid of Virginia.
“Pharmacies and pharmacists have a critical responsibility to ensure controlled substances are dispensed lawfully and safely to the public. This includes highly addictive opioids as we continue to see the impact of the opioid crisis,” said Deputy Inspector General Christian J. Schrank of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG). “HHS-OIG is entering into a Corporate Integrity Agreement with Rite Aid, which includes a prescription drug claims review to have an Independent Review Organization determine whether prescription drugs are properly prescribed, dispensed, and billed. HHS-OIG will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to hold providers accountable that put the public at risk.”
Is Rite Aid rebranding?
For the first time in over four decades, Rite Aid is undergoing a rebranding process. During an analyst call held this week, the drugstore chain unveiled a new logo and announced a new strategy and store layout, which it has designated the “store of the future.” This marks the first instance in over four decades that Rite Aid has undertaken a rebranding initiative.
Is Rite Aid losing money?
Rite Aid, a US pharmacy chain, has reported a $307 million loss between March and May 2023, and a loss of about $3 billion over the past six years. The company, which employed over 6, 100 pharmacists and operated 2, 100 retail pharmacy locations across 17 states, plans to close 154 stores nationwide. It now operates around 1, 416 stores in 16 states. Rite Aid also sold off some of its businesses, including its Elixir Solutions business, to MedImpact Healthcare Systems for $577 million in February. The company’s bankruptcy court documents indicate a significant reduction in its footprint.
Is Rite Aid being bought out?
In 2017, Walgreens announced the cancellation of its merger with Rite Aid, offering to purchase 2, 186 stores for $5. 18 billion, plus a $325 million cancellation penalty. A revised deal was made, with Walgreens purchasing 1, 932 locations for $4. 38 billion, approved by the FTC on September 19. The revised sale was completed in March 2018, leaving Rite Aid with around 2, 600 remaining stores. Three distribution centers and related inventory were transferred, and most stores were rebranded as Walgreens.
In February 2018, Albertsons announced plans to acquire the remainder of Rite Aid in a merger of equals, but the plan failed to please shareholders and was cancelled on August 8, 2018. In October 2020, Rite Aid announced the acquisition of Bartell Drugs, a Seattle-area chain, for $95 million, which faced criticism from customers due to staff turnover and computer system glitches.
What went wrong at Rite Aid?
Rite Aid, the third-largest drugstore chain in the United States, has encountered considerable difficulties as a consequence of prolonged mismanagement and misguided decision-making. The company’s decision to file for bankruptcy in October was precipitated by the accumulation of liabilities associated with lawsuits pertaining to the distribution of opioids and the prevailing challenges within the retail pharmacy sector. In an article published by The Wall Street Journal, the company’s unfortunate history was detailed, with particular emphasis placed on the significant losses incurred over an extended period of time.
Did Walgreens buy out all Rite Aid’s?
In 2015, Walgreens attempted to buy Rite Aid for $17. 2 billion, but the deal fell through due to the Federal Trade Commission’s refusal to approve it. In June 2017, Walgreens canceled the merger and bought 42 of Rite Aid’s stores for $4. 38 billion. A recent lawsuit accuses Walgreens Boots Alliance of downplaying antitrust regulator scrutiny, with the settlement still requiring approval from a federal judge in Pennsylvania.
How many Rite Aid stores are in California?
A total of 351 Rite Aid stores are currently operational within the state of California.
Why did Rite Aid collapse?
The company’s financial situation was significantly compromised by instances of corruption and poor management, as it operated 4, 000 drugstores across the United States. Additionally, the company was engaged in a series of strategic acquisitions, including the purchase of numerous drugstore chains and a pharmacy benefit management company. The company’s operations were adversely affected by these circumstances.
Is Rite Aid closing 53 more stores including 11 in PA?
Rite Aid, a pharmaceutical retailer, has announced the closure of 53 more stores, including 11 in Pennsylvania, in December. The closures are part of a larger chain of 255 previously announced closures. The closures were announced in bankruptcy filings in December, and are part of a larger plan to streamline operations and reduce costs. Rite Aid’s closures are part of a larger effort to improve its financial health.
Will Rite Aid go under?
Following the successful conclusion of its financial restructuring and the avoidance of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Rite Aid will transition to a private company.
Is Walgreens taking over Rite Aid?
In 2015, Walgreens attempted to buy Rite Aid for $17. 2 billion, but the deal fell through due to the Federal Trade Commission’s refusal to approve it. In June 2017, Walgreens canceled the merger and bought 42 of Rite Aid’s stores for $4. 38 billion. A recent lawsuit accuses Walgreens Boots Alliance of downplaying antitrust regulator scrutiny, with the settlement still requiring approval from a federal judge in Pennsylvania.
📹 Brush With Greatness: Paul Newman Needs Help | Letterman
Audience members share their celebrity encounters with Dave. (From “Late Night,” air date: 6/23/87) #brushwithgreatness …
When I was a kid in the 60’s, pop bottles had deposits because they could cleaned and refilled. Bottling companies had entire assembly lines dedicated to steam-cleaning and refilling returnable bottles. The deposit bottles were typically made of thicker/heavier glass, and often had a fluted design. Eventually, companies started selling “no deposit” bottles, made of thinner, cheaper glass. That sucked for us kids, as deposit bottles meant candy money.
I recycled cans when I was a kid. A friend of mine and I would collect cans then take them to King Soopers, they had the highest payout (I think 1.5 cents per can and 25 cents per pound) and they also treated us (about 12 or 13 years old) with the same respect as adults. Between the 2 of us we’d make 5-15 dollars per day for just a few hours of work. Not a bad piece of change for a 12 year old in the 80s.
My wife and her twin were caught as young children “finding” milk bottles at the back of the store and taking them to the front for a “refund”. It worked once, so they tried again. This time, they also bought chocolate milk. Busted! The small town shop owner called their grandpa and told them what was going on. At the time, milk was a luxury for the girls as their mother was struggling. They “got in trouble” but it was minimal. No LEO involved.
I lived in Holland. They don’t charge you extra to punish those that don’t recycle. I can buy a crate of beer in glass bottles, then return the empty bottles in the crate and get the money back for the bottles/crate etc. It means I’m only paying for the beer and not the container. It’s great. The homeless also play an excellent role by picking up ANY littered bottles and are the work force helping recycle. Same with plastic bottles. Reward recyclers instead of punishing those that don’t. This is how society should work in general.
This law is actually almost impossible not to accidentally break if you live on the border. If you have a party on the border of Indiana/Ohio and Michigan where people from multiple states bring drinks, you’ll have a bin of half eligible and half ineligible empty cans! People on the border often go grocery shopping in either state too or may use a vending machine in either one.
My first job was working in a bottle return room at a grocery store in Michigan. The owners of this family IGA decided to rig up their own bottle counter at the front of the store. It had a red light that counted bottles that went down a PVC pipe. It never read barcodes like the modern bottle return machines. A few people in town had figured this out, so they would start throwing anything in that machine…baby food jars, vegetable cans, etc. Some would even tie a shoelace to a pop can and just put it down the pipe and drag it back repeatedly to up to ring up a few dollars. As a guy in the back sorting all of the bottles, cans, beer bottles, I saw all kinds of fraud. My only gripe with returning bottles in Michigan is that grocery store chains like Meijer, Walmart, Kroger, and Costco will only accept the bottles/cans that their particular store sells. If you paid 10 cents for a bottle of Sam’s Cola from Wally World, you can only return that bottle to Wally World. If Meijer carried one special flavor of Mountain Dew that Kroger didn’t, you could only return that bottle to Meijer. Our state should amend the law saying that if you are returning bottles and cans for a deposit, they should be accepted anywhere…but, then again, this is Michigan. Democrats don’t have time to make sense.
Dude you just brought back some great memories, I lived in Tecumseh Michigan and a 1/4-1/2 mile from a little corner store. This particular stretch of road was very litter prone, you could see cans and bottles all the time. I used to ask my mom if i could go to George’s market (the name of the corner store) She’d say hurry back, and I’d go, no money in my pocket ( I was like 7 or 8 back then (very different time than now a days). Anyways as I walked I’d pick up whole bottles and cans and by the time i got to the store, I had enough for a pop and a couple candy bars and still had like 2 bucks left for the next time I decided I wanted something. hard to believe that was over 40 years ago
Deposits are a great way to encourage certain behaviors. Aldi grocery chain has shopping carts that have to be unlocked by inserting a quarter. When you return the cart, you get your quarter back. If you don’t want to return the cart, you can just leave it in the parking lot. Somebody WILL return it for the quarter. It is a brilliant, simple solution.
Holy crap! I’m probably guilty of this, without even realizing it. I was in CA for 2.5 years on a job, and we drank a ridiculous amount of water and gatoraide, because we were in the desert. And most of the water etc. we bought was purchased in CA, but we bough our diesel for our generator across the border in AZ, as it was substantially cheaper. And when the guy did the fuel run, he would quite often get a half dozen flats of AZ water bottles. We collected all of the empties, and turned them in at the end. So i know there were AZ bottles in there, but how many, don’t know. And it wasn’t done intentionally, we just wanted to get rid of the bottles in a responsible way.
While at university I was charged with running our club’s food & drink fridge. We would bring in 1200 cans of pop per week, each of which had a 5 cent deposit. We found that the process of returning them was not worth the time and effort, so we would neatly pile them in the club room. Twice a week an elderly couple would come by and pick up the cans. They would return them along with many others they would collect on campus. It worked out well for everyone. 🙂 .
The real issue is that these cans & bottles are coming from city recycling programs throughout Arizona. NY had 5 and 10 cent deposits. NY grocery stores had massive “bottle rooms” that got emptied out by a 3rd party company every 2-3 days. Glass bottles were very popular then, they were 10 cents. If I went around the highways collecting cans & bottles, in that regard, it’s not stealing because someone else threw them away.
One thing you missed on this Steve, was that this wasn’t entirely for the State to get some cash. Michigan used to have a HUGE amount of cans and bottles along virtually every road. Some of the interstates were so covered with broken glass ( as I remember the 696 corridor / Interchange ) actually had sweepers covering those entries and exits because the broken glass was such a tire hazard. Michigan roads are still a nightmare to drive on in a great many areas, but not because of the broken glass I remember from the early to mid 70’s.
The bottle deposit made a HUGE difference in reducing litter in Michigan. I was involved with a 4-H highway cleanup project in the 70s in a few years before and after the bottle return law. In years before, cleaning up 2 miles of I-196 in west Michigan, we filled up two pickups with 6 foot high stake side cargo walls, every year, almost all of it bottles and cans. The year after the bottle return, we only collected about 6 garbage bags of litter in the same stretch of road. These days pretty much the only containers you see by the road are beer cans for cheap brands that people throw out of the car as soon as they’re finished drinking them in order to not get caught with open containers.
I got paid in deposit bottles for my first job in middle school. We lived in a housing development that was being built. So the contractor would bring a cooler of soda in deposit bottles each day, have the builders just toss the empties on the lot. Most evenings I’d go through and pick up the bottles and the leftover fragments of wood, brick, nails, and other stuff and toss them in a pit he’d dig while keeping all the bottles I found. Then when the house was nearly done, but before it was landscaped he’d have me spend the weekend doing a thorough clean up and burn the debris. I got to keep all the deposits (maybe $5 on a hot day) plus a couple hundred dollars for the weekend clean up. It worked out nicely for everyone and eventually got me hired to help put in subfloors and roofs and even some painting work.
One of the problems is that you cash them in for CRV at recycling centers so they pay by weight so everything gets dumped in bins or containers and weighed. You’d have to inspect each bottle for CRV markings. Another thing about CRV is that any store that sells something CRV is required to take it back, but they don’t because the “fine” for not taking back CRV is so low it’s much cheaper to just pay it than hassle with empty cans.
My problem with CRV was always that it was a “deposit” but there’s no actual state-run return center (it’s all privatized). So private companies always take some of your refund for themselves. Nowadays, everyone just has curbside recycling, so the need to incentivize is far beyond obsolete. In reality it’s become a beverage tax, but they still call it a “deposit”.
This reminds me of a story I heard back in the 70s. A guy lived near a church. He didn’t attend, but would go at the end of each service and tell the treasurer that he ran a business and could use the loose change from their offering. So he would write a check to the church and take the change. At the end of the year he took all of it as a deduction, which he could prove with canceled checks. I guess they finally contacted the church and uncovered the scam!
When I was a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, it was a two cent deposit on bottles, but it wasn’t a state program, it was something run by the bottlers. The returned bottles went back to the plant where they were cleaned, and then reused. The retailers didn’t much care for handling those bottles, and I imagine as the cost of labor when up with the high inflation of the late 70s and early 80s, it was costing more than it was worth to them. That’s when the “convenience” of disposable plastic became a thing.
Growing up in Michigan I lived next to the largest subdivision in the state, in terms of the number of houses. It was always under construction in new phases. The construction workers would often leave their empties on site, and it wouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes for me and my friends to have collect enough for a couple candy bars and sodas for each of us at the local mom and pop convenience store.
I live in San Francisco. Most people here just put bottles and cans in the recycle bin. Homeless people are sometimes seen roaming the city with large sacks, scavenging. Taking bottles and cans from recycle bins waiting for the garbage truck to pick them up is a crime, though I’ve never heard of anyone arrested or prosecuted for it. The upshot is that the 7 million is money that is not rightfully the governments as it profits for many more millions of bottle fees that are never returned.
If I remember correctly it’s not easy to cash things in Michigan if you are not a resident. That said, there are people in the UP that buy in Wisonsin and then return in Michigan. I have met quite a few people who went to college in Michigan so when they went on trips they would collect a few, but go all in on the way home. Usually take care of the gas bill for their vacation trips. This might have totalled a couple hundred in the day. Back when I was a kid, most of our spending money in the summer came from glass pop bottles. We spent it on pop and ice cream for the whole family. We never considered keeping it for ourselves. One time I took a quarter to an old time local drug store with a soda fountain and bought a ice cream cone that had 5 scoups of ice cream as it was a nickle a scoop there.
There were a group of people here in California that found out if one cuts a plastic bottle in half, one can run both halves into the self serve machine and get 10 cents vs. only 5 cents for the whole bottle. They could only do this during the late evenings when the self serve machines did not have an attendant present. As a result the recycling company shut down the machine for after hours use.
We also have a deposit system in Denmark. On some trash cans there’s a shelf where you can put your empty bottles and cans instead of throwing them in the trashcan, if you can’t be bothered to return them. This is to make it easier for homeless etc to collect the bottles instead of going through the trash.
I knew someone who lived and worked in IL but had a vacation home in MI. They made regular trips to the vacation home to enjoy their vacation home. They just happened to bring their bags of cans with them from IL every time. I learned it was actually against the law shortly before they ended up actually retiring to their vacation home. This went on for a couple of years or so before their retirement. We built up quite a pile of bags of cans in our basement during the covid times where they shutdown the can return at our local Meijer. When they finally opened back up you had to be lucky to get in when they weren’t full up because of all the people returning everything due to the backlog. I ended up waiting a few more weeks and eventually worked through our backlog, but it took like 6 months to do it.
The best part? When you buy cans and bottles in California (and other places), you have to pay the Redemption Value. However, many cities provide recycling bins and if you put your used cans and bottles in those bins, you get absolutely nothing. Even better? Those residents PAY for those bins! And of course, we have people that regularly go around the neighborhoods, take cans and bottles out of those bins, and then cash them in.
I’m pretty sure I have a few years on you, Steve. I used to work in a mom-n-pop country store and we used top pay 2 cents per bottle to people when they returned their empties. We had to separate the bottles by brand and crate them up. I remember the pop bottle crates. There were 2 kinds the 24 cell crate and the 4 cell crate (these held 4 paper 6 packs). The Coke, Pepsi, and RC trucks would take them when they were full, but not if there was only 23 bottles. They would issue us a ticket for the bottles and the money was settled in the monthly bill. The bottles were heavier “feldspar” glass, so they were washed and reused. The government was not involved in this exchange, only the bottling companies.
Back when I lived with my parents in Massachusetts, there was a can return place a few minutes’ drive from our house. Once I got my driver’s license, it became my job to bring the family’s used soda cans in, and I would get to keep the money. In a large family with several heavy soda drinkers, that was a lot of cans, and although it didn’t compare to what I got from my part-time job, it was still a nice bit of money. All of those cans were purchased in-state, often from the grocery stores on the same block as the return place, so there was no risk of fraud charges.
We worked at a campground in California a few years ago. We recycled soda cans. When we drove the 60 mikes to return them, at the state recycling center they would only give you the scrap price back. NOT the value of the cans as per charged. A huge rip off. We didn’t bother to recycle after that, it was a net loss for us and a bonus for California. The state did NOT want you to return them.
As a truck driver, I spent some time in Michigan and I kind of understand how the bottle redemption works there let me explain the difference between Michigan and California. In Michigan the consumer gets the whole $0.10 back. I’m assuming that the recycling operator gets his costs covered by getting a little bit more than that from the state. In California, it’s the other way around. The consumer pays the $0.05 at the register but they’re not going to get that $0.05 back. The cans are returned by weight and it never works out. You may be only getting $0.04 back that can because the state is only going to give the recycling agency $0.05. all of the recycling agencies advertise cents per pound and they calculate this cents per pound that will allow them a little bit of operating profit from the $0.05 they’re going to get from the state.
The province of Quebec, Canada has a 5 cent refund on all soda containers while neighbouring Ontario has none. The Kramer – Newman scam was stopped in its tracks the moment the refund program was started. All soda containers sold in Quebec are marked as originating in Quebec. The machines that give refunds scan the containers and reject all that don’t qualify. It is also very easy to visually identify all Quebec metal soda cans. They have gold coloured top while Ontario ones are silver.
I remember it was 3 cents for an 8oz bottle, 5 cents for a 16oz, and 10 cents for a liter, but that went away when the soda companies switched to plastic. I don’t recall their being a deposit. It was just saving the companies money to clean and reuse the glass bottles. Once a month my sister and I would walk to the store that was 2.1 miles away without a penny between us and pick up bottles along the way. We’d come home with a Halloween’s haul of candy.
Read the title, want to see the story. the local newspaper ran a story in the early 2000’s. Un ity New Hampshire was having a regular town meeting. When someone offered the suggestion that the town should collect all the deposit bottles & cans ( New Hampshire doesn’t do this ), sending them all to Massachusetts, it seemed ready to pass until. Someone pointed out that this was illegal & we got a news reporter sitting right there.
Bottles go into the machine, and get crushed, then they fall off into a bin. When the bin gets filled, they just use a pallet jack and move the bin out and put a new one in. Usually you can kinda push the pile to spread it around making room for more. I have actually seen these machines from both sides. I used to work for a guy delivering bread to the store so I was often in the back rooms of the stores and one store the truck bays were right behind the bottle machines.
I recall the Seinfeld episode. Funny personal story: I lived in Michigan during the 90’s when my three children were growing up. They often would take cans/bottles to the store and get a little pocket change for candy or whatever. My parents, who lived in PA, witnessed them doing this on a visit to MI. My retired, very law abiding and retired citizen decided to help his grandchildren out. He and mom were avid golfers so dad would scour the trash receptacles at each tee box and take out any cans/bottles and put them in a bag much to the disgust of my mother. Upon arriving home he would wash them out and store them for transport to MI. They visited MI about 3 times/yr so he had a sizable amount of cans each time they visited to distribute evenly to the kids. I think it is one of the endearing memories they have of him! It was like Santa Claus at Christmas time when the car pulled into the driveway. They would run out to the car and ask Boppa if he had any cans. He would smile and open the deck lid of the huge Chrysler trunk to reveal the entire trunk full of garbage bags with cans in them. They were so excited. This went on for about 4-5 years. My kids are middle aged now and Boppa died in the early 2000’s but when they all get together and relive their childhood invariable they bring up all the cans Boppa brought to them from PA. Now the machines in PA read the bar code of where the can came from and will reject the can or bottle.
I live in Canada. I wondered why Border Protection confiscated my bottles when I went to visit my Aunt in Detroit. In Canada, Well Ontario, we don’t have ANY bottle return other than a rule saying we must recycle. Anyone caught dumping bottles & cans in landfills can be fined. Didn’t know I was breaking the law. Busted.
I had a buddy in Great Lakes who was in training with me and he was from Michigan. We had a square concrete pit that everyone dumped their cans into and you were encouraged to take them to recycling, which is what my buddy did….in Michigan. He would fill the back of his b2200 up with bags of cans and return them in Michigan, it covered the gas money both ways.
When Germany implemented their 25 cent bottle deposit, similar concerns were raised. As a result every bottle with a deposit has a special barcode on it, so if you bring in bottles from other countries (no borders in Europe) you can not claim the deposit. The barcode makes automated handling a lot easier.
Now that you mention it, when I was a kid, when dirt was new, “pop” bottles were worth a nickel. I’d wander the barrow pits and roadsides of the tiny burg we lived in, take them to the local store and trade them in, and being about 4 YO I thought I was doing well, but when I stumbled on the stacks of bottles behind that store, my “business” came to a quick end!!
How is this even possible? We are talking about 1000’s … No 10’s of 1000’s of pounds of cans and bottles. 10 year period they are averaging around $750,000 each year and the state never wondered “Huh this seems a little odd” How can you even return this many w/o drawing attention? Does the state just accept whatever they are told? Who is accountable for actually making sure the ACCOUNTING is done for correctly OR are we still using the Honor System?!!!
When my oldest brothers and sister were kids, our town had a gas station and a grocery store across the street from each other. This was in the late 1940s and early 1950s. My oldest brothers and sister discovered that they could buy a coke (6 oz) for a nickel and then run across the street and sell the bottle at the grocery store for something like four cents. It didn’t take too long for the owners of the gas station and the grocery store to figure that out and put a stop to it.
Here, in Quebec, Canada, we have a 5 cent deposit on drinks containers. When you take your cans or bottles back for the refund, most larger stores will have a machine (for plastic or metal) like what Steve described. You insert the container into the machine. The container spins around for the machine to scan the UPC bar code. If it has the correct UPC, the bottle is accepted, crushed and put in the bin. If the UPC is not correct or is missing or unreadable, the bottle is rejected, spit back out at you, and must be turned in at the service counter. There a store employee will either accept or reject it manually. An out-of-province bottle would be rejected by the machine. So there is no way anyone can commit such fraud (at least not by using such machines). So why don’t machines in the US do a similar scan to prevent such misuse/abuse/fraud ?
When I was a kid PA had a $0.02 deposit on glass bottles. A 16oz. Pepsi cost $0.16. Some of the “older” kids would just leave their bottles.(I guess that they were too cool to return them.) My friends and I would collect the bottles and take them to the corner store and spend the money on penny candy and, if we had collected enough, some more Pepsi. I’m not sure when but PA stopped having stores collect the deposit. It’s a shame. It was a great racket for us from the mid-60’s through the early 70’s.
As someone who works at a grocery store in Michigan. We get people trying to return Canadian bottles. You know they’re Canadian because the information on the bottle/can is in both English and French. And when you point it out many of them will get angry and demand you take them anyhow even though it’s illegal.
Years ago my uncle found out drink bottles were going to go up to $0.10 deposits. The local country stores were giving $0.03- to kids, $0.05 if turned for more drinks. My uncle started paying $0.05, $0.06 if they brought 24 or more in flats or bulk. He actually made money when the deposit went to $0.10, but it took him a while to sell them. People thought he’d lost his mind to start with. After a year or so they saw the genius of his methods.
I grew up in Michigan and my friends and I would regularly visit construction sites and walk along the road picking up cans and bottles. Of course, this was the 1980s so $0.10 was worth a lot more than it was today, but still… $0.10 is $0.10 – recycle those bottles and cans, people! Great article, Steve! 😀👍
The method of redemption you mentioned of inserting one can or bottle at a time is also used in Oregon. It is slow & laborious waiting for the machine to spin/laser scan the can or bottle to make sure it is intact. In California, you can take your aluminum cans and both plastic & glass bottles to a recycling center & get paid by the pound. The last time I checked, they were only paying $1.40 a pound for aluminum. Glass is much lower. $7 mil. divided by 356,000 lbs. comes out to over $19.00 a pound. What math is California using? Do they have a new version of the ‘new math’ that was introduced a few decades ago?
I lived near the Ohio Michigan border and bought beverages in both states, and usually returned them to Michigan because of the higher redemption which then was ten cents. I knew there were Ohio bottles in the returns, but I wasn’t going to examine every bottle before stuffing them into the machine. Maybe I earned twenty dollars over three years, but always turned around and did my shopping in that store. I was a small time crook; I think the statute of limitations has expired after twenty five years, and I don’t think they’d come to Florida to extradite me anyhow.
The Robot Lady’s outro cracked me up..!!! By the way, here in Australia we have a 10¢ deposit on cans and bottles and cardboard drink containers. (Except wine bottles, spirit bottles, cordial bottles, household cleaning bottles) One day as i was cashing in on my collection… I asked the guy at the recycling centre how they’re paid… He told me it was a little known fact that the deposit that we pay is actually 20¢ per item, and so the extra 10¢ is for handling and processing… Which when you think about it, that makes it an even greater windfall for the government when no one seeks to get their deposit back. Don’t get me wrong though, i think its a great program that really helps the environment… I actually wish every wrapper, box and bag had a big fat deposit on it… (especially McDonald’s food wrappers) I can’t stand seeing rubbish or as they say in the USA, trash left tossed away around the countryside.
A couple of things. A story was done on Myers “if my memory is correct “, that the so called recycled cans end up stocked piled in Malaysia and not at a recycling facility. Second, a small family store can only return as many cases of bottles as the supplier sales them, so any extra bottles, the small business have to eat the return cost.
When I was in high school the band had a fund raising drive for new uniforms. We went to one farmhouse asking for glass and bottles. The owner said take the bottles on the back porch. We found over a hundred 1/2 cases of beer bottles in boxes. Took several pickup loads to haul them away. The grocery store couldn’t believe the number of beer bottles we bought in.
I grew up on the Ohio side of the Michigan border and remember that subject (long before Seinfeld). I recall seeing folks picking up bottles and cans along the roadways near the border (not just highways but the county roads too) and taking their collection into town to redeem them at this or that store and I always wondered if any of them just drove north another couple miles occasionally and took advantage of the difference of the higher price in Michigan.
I worked at the Oregon bottle recycling company, the machines would shred the cans and spit them in a bag, then we would take mountains of aluminum the size of houses and crush them in a cube, Back then it was common for people to steal the bags of shredded aluminum from the can machines at the stores because northern California was known for recycling by weight rather than individual can. And a truck bed of shredded aluminum was worth A LOT more than a bed of empty un crushed cans. Super common practice. I’ll sdmit I did it once or twice as a kid.
There was similar case in Maine. All states in New England have a bottle return deposit except NH. Most cans and bottles sold in NH are still marked with the bottle return deposit for the other New England states, even though we don’t pay it. There was a case where a guy was caught hauling a large box trailer full of cans from New Hampshire to Maine to collect the unpaid deposits. Similar outcome.
As someone who lives in a deposit state (Iowa) I’ve always wondered why it’s legal for beverage companies to print the refund information on cans and bottles that are distributed in non-deposit states. It seems like deposit containers should only be distributed in deposit states. Yet beverages sold in Minnesota and Illinois have the same deposit information printed on them.
Back when I lived in New Hampshire, I had to take my cans and bottles to the city recycling center. The people who worked there were running this scam. They would be in the can dumpster (about 25x8x8 feet) putting all the redeemable cans into trash bags for redemption in Massachusetts, about 5 miles to the south. They’re probably still at it today. Winchester, NH, if anyone is interested.
I got married in 1967 while I was in the USAF making $86 a month. When my wife and I wanted to go to the drive in movie the cost was $1 a car, we went to parks and picked up enough bottles (2 cents for small bottles and 5 cents for large) and some extra so we could buy a Jiffy Pop popcorn to make and take to the movie. This was good for us and the community and we are now married for 56 years and tell that story to our grand kids and tell them we were “poor” but happy. I wish all states had the refund for return policy to keep a lot of the plastic and glass recycled. We also just got back from Europe and noticed that (in most places) when you twist the cap off the plastic bottle the cap is held on so it will not be lost and become more litter. Here in Arizona some of the recycle centers will not take glass anymore, focus on those things and not the situation described here.
I used to love the bottle law in Michigan then came COVID. I used to let $30-40 build up, then go to the store around 9-10 at night when no one was in there and return them. With Covid they put hour restrictions and a $10 limit. So now you have to go in from noon-5, stand in line to get $10 per day. Now I just toss them in the curbside recycling bin. Funny how they will collect the deposit at all hours but theyve made it such a pain to return them it’s not worth it. If you go to Marquette, about 25 minutes from me you’ve got Meijer and Walmart but same thing with the lines and I think they have a $20 limit. Not worth my time. I miss the old days up to about 10 years ago when you could take paper bags in that held $2 to the service counter and they’d just give you the money… That was great. My kid worked at a grocery store and he said the money from deposits goes into an account, they deduct what was returned then send the surplus to the state monthly so they never actually are waiting for reimbursement.
My grandpa used to collect soda cans in trash bags for whenever he happened to next go to California. I imagine at 5 cents a piece he must have gotten at most high double- or low tripple-digit dollar amounts per visit, and he didn’t go often. It never occurred to anybody in the family that this might be illegal, just a waste of effort. I can’t imagine the efforts it would require to get $7.6 million worth of soda cans/bottles.
I remember back in the early 1990s I was visiting a friend in California and my friend wanted to go return a couple of bags of cans and Imdidnt see what the big deal was. I’m from Texas and Imhad recently returned a bag for a couple of bucks. So we head down the the scrap yard with maybe three large bags of crushed cans. I can’t really remember to total, but I can remember be totally shocked on how much she got back. It seemed like it was at least 4X what I had expected she was going to get.
My question would be what happens to the cans and bottles once they are returned to the facility that dispose of them? I can assure you that to some extent, some of those returned items end up at the homes of the employees and their family member when shopping they are returning them for a few dollars here and a few dollars there. It adds up, you’re going to be at the store anyhow. Returns on bottles when I was a child was two cents and every bottle that we could find and return got us more candy and eventually other things. My friend told me that foolishly when the 7-Up truck was sitting along the street loading up empties and taking in full bottles, kids were taking the empties out of the truck and later on in the day turning them back in. You know I would never do anything like that.
In California, you get money back from CRV bottles and cans based on weight. They don’t count the individual items. Also, since the recycling companies where you return CRV items are for profit companies, the price per pound varies and you never get near what you paid in CRV back. The most convenient places just outside grocery stores pay the lowest per pound and places out of the way pay more.
Here in Germany, single use soft drink bottles have a 25ct deposit. And it works, hardly any bottles in the streets any more. Homeless people collect them out of public transh cans (works better than pandhandling). I once saw a story on TV about a guy who collects tossed bottles at open air festivals, apparently it bought him his own RV and pays for admission to any concert or festival he likes to go to.
Life, imitating art, imitating life! Funny you mentioned you remember your redemption was 2-3 cents…I remember it was 5 cents for glass soda pop bottles, so I’d take two 6-packs from my great-grandmother’s mobile home to the nearby Sav-On and turn them in for 30 cents and buy a double ice cream cone for 25 cents!
The Michigan 10 cents deposit had a huge impact on litter. Adjusted for inflation, it was the equivalent to a 50 cent deposit today. Alas, it was written to only apply to carbonated beverages, as the litter problem was mostly sodapop and beer. Then, starting in the mid-80s, the single serv beverage market changed drastically.
Back in the 1960’s soda bottles generally had a two or three cent deposit (depending on the vendor). Our high school band would go out and collect these bottles door to door, along the roads and ditches (or anywhere else that we could find them). They were all hauled back to the school where they were sorted by vendor (i.e. Coke-a-Cola, Pepsi, etc), put in cases and loaded on to 40 foot semi trailers. Non-Return bottles and trash was loaded into dumpsters and sent to the landfill. That was one way the band made money to pay for uniforms and large instruments. Yes, it also kept the neighborhood roads free of a lot trash as well.
I know someone who has done this up here in Canada. I can’t say exactly who it is but I’ve literally known him since the day I was born and I know EVERYTHING about him. 🙂 Whenever he heads out of province to see his daughters he usually stops in to see a number of friends. When they arrange their plans he asks them to put all their bottles and cans aside instead of in the recycling and when he sees them they usually have a couple of bags waiting. The last trip I made I got enough…I mean this guy I know got enough back to cover his gas costs for the return trip.
Three points: 1. Taking containers that were already paid for to resell them in another state would be theft, which there are already laws against. 2. If every state agreed to have the same refund amount there would no longer be any financial incentive to leverage. 3. Better to recycle in another state than not at all. They should change the laws banning that.
This reminds me of a story out of TN, about a illegal lottery that a guy had been running for several years. He collected the money, held a drawing and pay out the winnings. He made a few million dollars. The participants understood what they where doing. No one complained about it. However, the state, which had just recently legalized an official state lottery, claimed that this “illegal” lottery was essentially stealing from the state government. They ran the story to say that this individual was stealing money from the state “collage fund”??? Seriously. Governments don’t like it when people cut in on their legal theft, and public exploitations.
I love Michigan’s bottle return. I barely ever see bottles or cans on the road and when I do see them, they’re usually gone by the time I drive past again. I’d like to see the program expanded to include non-carbonated drinks and fruit juice bottles. We have the most beautiful chunk of land in the world, we need to keep it that way
When I was about 10 years old, all pop bottles had a 10p return on them. We were on holiday staying on a boring caravan park. We had like £5 each to last us 2 weeks, so money was tight. We found out that if we snuck around the back of the little camp shop next to the pub, that’s where they stored all the empties for collection. We’d grab a plastic bag, put 4 or 5 in the bag, take it round to the shop and get our money – which we spent on sweets. We’d wait until the shop assistant changed shifts and do it again that day. We thought it was great fun. We must of made £1 per day ( this was about 1981 ). We were kids, we didn’t know any better. I still laugh about it to this day.
This is terrible. I always try to stay on the right side of the law in California. That’s why I only steal from private retailers and only when I need more smack or apache or a new tent. I consider gak beneath me, so I stick with smack and apache even though it costs the Walgreen’s that I hit a little more. I was pooping in the gutter a couple of days ago and I saw a truck load of aluminum cans drive by with Arizona plates. It sickened me when I thought of what they were trying to do to my beloved State of California.
Ohian here. We were planning a vacation to Michigan. My brotherin-law loaded up the motorhome with a lot of bottles. Just across the border, he couldn’t get away with it but halfway into the state…. Pretty sure he got the idea from Seinfeld. Well, that was over 25 years ago so, hopefully the statute of limitations is passed.
What’s ironic is I was on a plane last night and had a drink and I noticed the bottle said Maine 5 cents. I then thought that perhaps the airline could consolidate all these bottles when the planes were cleaned and then fly them to states where they could maximize the return all as part of their normal operation without adding any flights.
My family had a grocery store when I was growing up and our state had one of these rules. Our return bin was near the front door for customer convenience. Took us a year to figure out people were stealing returned bottles on their way out & return them the next day for another refund. I think what tipped us off was an uncommon brand of soda that kept popping up, and one day we noticed it wasn’t in the bin at the end of the night. Obviously we moved the bin after that day!!
I live in a city about five miles north of the Michigan-Indiana state line. There are stores JUST south of the state line that sell deposit-free pop and beer, that a lot of Michigan residents take advantage of. BUT the bottle-return machines north of the state line have warnings posted on them to remind people that returning out-of-state bottles and cans is against the law. I don’t know if it’s a misdemeanor or a felony, but I suspect the dollar amount has some determinative effect on that.
They create the problem without understanding the incentives that they created, then pass laws to punish people for having those incentives. BTW, going across state lines to get a better deal is a form of what’s called arbitrage. And, it’s also a problem with some people on food stamps (EBT), who also do this wherein miscreants will literally purchase bottled water, dump out the water, and recycle them for cash.
As a child in Oregon I’d go with my cousin, who was 14 and had scuba equipment, to the various lakes. We’d float our small aluminium boat just off the shore usually next to the dam or other popular fishing hole . My cousin would submerge and with his regulator fill the hundreds of beer and pop bottles with air and as they popped to the surface I’d retrieve them. Decades of fishermen would throw their bottles in the lake next to their fishing holes. That’s how we earned our summer spending money. As I recall we got 3 to 5 cents for pop and beer bottles. Back in 1962 a dollar went a long way.
If they punish this family then they should go after every person that picks up a bottle they didn’t purchase and returns it, their just mad because someone figured out how to beat the system. This family should be given a award because the they saved 7 million dollars worth of trash from littering this planet. Leave it to the govt to create a game then change the rules when someone wins.
Reminds me of a book called Sway where the author explains the power of money to influence decisions. I don’t understand the math involved where I’m supposed to drive my cans and bottles back to the store to get a handful of nickels. I throw all my bottles/cans in the recycling. I tried once to return about 20 items to the store, the machine was out of order and a small amount of liquid spilled into my brand new car causing a permanent stain and smell. Our time and gas money probably costs more than we’d ever receive in return. They are manipulating psychology and irrational behavior because people don’t want the government to have those nickels. Just accept that your 6 pack costs 30 cents more.
Back in the 80’s, I would ride my bike up and down the country roads, collecting bottles and cans and taking them to the recycling center. 5 cents for cans, 10 cents for plastic bottles and 25 cents for glass bottles. I’d make $5-$10 in a day, which was my arcade money. My favorite time to collect bottles/cans was right after the 4th of July. Always made out like a bandit that day. Ahhh, memories…
Can we just pause to appreciate: 1)how many bottles you have to return before the state of California realizes that it’s paid for more out from redemptions than it’s actually received deposits, 2) the conversation between “Payables” and “Receivables”, and 3) the kind of work ethic that says, “_No, $5m isn’t enough to consider being ahead enough to quit, Now pick up those cans and load them in the Semi Truck!_”
From Michigan here. Yes we may have 10 cent refund, but it’s only for carbonated drinks. So guess what we are finding on the side of our roadways, foot trails, woods, parks. Yes, fruit drink containers, water bottles, (and I’m sorry but anyone that buys bottled water are idiots, never bought, never will, and the couple times friends gave me one I can’t finish, tastes like plastic, or in other words CRAP)!!!!!! Back to the show, energy drink containers on side of road, ANYTHING that is not carbonated DOES NOT HAVE 10 CENTS REFUND!!!! Our government idiots at work!!! Why not make ANY bottle, container, drink or what ever a 10 cent refund. As far as I’m concerned, they can make it a 25 cent refund, they thought of that but then our government idiots thought it would lead to theft, so that part I understand!!
When I was a kid Massachusetts initiated a “bottle bill” for 5¢ a container. I’m sure at some point someone had one of these return schemes in mind, because after a while, all the cans suddenly had the pop tab anodized blue if it was purchased in MA. If it didn’t have a blue pull tab, no nickel. Seems like a pretty simple solution.
I work as a cleaner in a local college, part of my job is emptying the trash bins around the campus. If they introduced a refund scheme for pop/soft drink bottles here in England, I’d be rich beyond my wildest dreams. For a while, as a hobby and just to see how it goes, I did collect aluminium cans, collected about sixty a day. Seventy-two 330ml cans weighs one kilo, for which I could get thirty-eight GBP pence (say forty-seven US cents) As in the Seinfeld episode, you need a large enough vehicle, and live near the recycling plant so you don’t spend too much on fuel.
When I was a kid in Michigan I worked a bottle return at a Meijer and used to catch people doing this all the time. Once you handle enough cans you can tell an out of state can just by looking at it from about 10 feet away. The tops of the cans where they print the deposit information looks slightly different on out of state cans.
You can do this in IReland with bottles from Northern Ireland that have the barcode for the return on them – they come from the same distribution centre – but don’t have the deposit because Northern Ireland is a different jurisdiction…. You can also print and tape the codes for the more expensive bottles, on the cheaper bottles.
We have a similar system here in Germany. The bottles all have barcodes which the machine reads and adds to your refund voucher. Some people came up with the idea of scanning the bar code and printing copies to stick on bottles that are not included in the recycling system, mostly wine bottles and some fruit juice bottles. All illegal of course.
It is even worse. Many retailers will only give container refunds for products they sell in the location where you are attempting the returns. The machines are specific down to size, form and flavor. Then the refund slips must often be redeemed only at the location where the slip was issued. It is definitely a headache. Conscientious recycling seems like a better option, but then people would have to be taught morals, and government wouldn’t abide by that…
Is there any signage at these machines/redemption centers stating the containers have to be sourced from within the state? Or do the containers have the typical state name abbreviations with the amount of value cast/molded/printed on them, with any specific verbiage stating they must be sourced from that/those particular states to be eligible? Seems to me that without those inclusions they might have the right to deny paying for them but they certainly don’t have the right to prosecute. You see, by the time someone exerts the effort to collect, transport and redeem they have reasonable right to collect. Plus, where did the products come from, where were they bottled? I’ve been in many states, far from those with the redemption programs, and have seen containers with those markings on them but never any disclosures of redemption rules, possibly leading to prosecution.
Last time I was in the USA/CA was in mid 2014 and I don’t remember ever seeing any bottle deposit schemes in place, despite the fact I’d expect San-Francisco to be the first place in CA to implement that sort of thing. However I have a lot of experience of the German Pfand system, which is scheduled to be implemented across the UK by Oct 2027. 🍾 In the German (And also UK) implementations the deposit schemes are nationwide, not state-by-state, and this means it’s perfectly OK to buy a drink in Hamburg and return the bottle/reclaim the deposit in Stuttgart. This removes a lot of headaches of the I bought this in IL and am now in MI variety, and I’d have to say I think the US schemes need to be made a uniform, nationwide Federal-level matter rather than a State-level one. 🇺🇸 The UK system (Which is publicly documented on Gov,UK) will achieve this in a way that’s compatible with UK devolution, so the US could easily take the same approach to maintain state-level control over the scheme whilst making it universal throughout the US. 👍 It’s worth noting that container deposit schemes tend to have visible acceptance marks on them (The German system, for example, uses a mark that’s immediately recognisable by humans and also automated equipment) and this can help keep „foreign” 🇬🇧 containers out of state-level schemes. A geographical outline of the state with a bottle & can graphic and the deposit in cents would probably be best. 🪙 Finally: I normally travel around the US via Greyhound and have bought sodas from filling stations all across the continental US over the years. The possibility of getting banged-up for innocently pfanding a NV-bought bottle in CA seems pretty heavy-handed at least for <5 containers, and could cause concerns for overseas tourists too - Especially German and Norwegian, who are cultured to always reclaim the deposits from anywhere in that same country. 😨