Ask your Howard County Elected Officials to Support the Maryland Bottle Bill to Reduce Litter and Plastic Pollution, and Increase Recycling!

Support the Maryland Bottle Bill to Reduce Litter and Plastic Pollution

I am writing to ask you to please support the Maryland Beverage Container Recycling Refund and Litter Reduction Program, a.k.a. the Maryland Bottle Bill, to reduce beverage container litter and plastic pollution and increase beverage container recycling. Marylanders buy more than 5.5 billion beverage containers annually, but only about a quarter of them are recycled. More than four billion containers every year end up in the environment, in a landfill, incinerated, or littering the landscape and waterways. Beverage containers are half of the trash by volume in the Anacostia River watershed and are pervasive in Baltimore Harbor. Plastic bottles are the third most frequently littered plastic in beach cleanups. They break into microplastics, are consumed by wildlife, and move up the food chain. Humans are ingesting up to a credit card's worth of plastic a week. The Maryland Bottle Bill would reduce beverage container litter and plastic pollution, and more than triple the recycling rate for beverage containers in Maryland to 90 percent. It would add a small deposit to the cost of beverage containers that is refunded to customers when the containers are returned for recycling. Under this program, you are buying the beverage, but borrowing the container. The deposit is a powerful incentive to return used beverage containers and to collect those that are littered, for their refund value. Ten US states, covering about 90 million people, have longstanding recycling refund programs. Programs like these have reduced beverage container litter by as much as 84 percent. Michigan and Oregon have achieved beverage container recycling rates of 90 percent with a 10 cent deposit. These programs collect clean, source-separated materials that can be used in the production of new containers, reducing greenhouse gasses and saving energy compared to products made from virgin materials. In Howard County, the program would divert thousands of tons of beverage containers annually from litter and the waste stream, and capture them for recycling into new containers. The County would save money, because there will be fewer containers trashed or littered, and costs of the collection and processing of containers would be funded by beverage companies, not taxpayers. The County would have no obligation to operate or enforce the program. Statewide, it would divert an additional 3.6 billion containers per year, 2.3 billion of which are plastic bottles, from litter and the waste stream. A public opinion poll in late 2024 found that 90 percent of registered voters in Maryland would support a beverage container redemption program with a 10 cent refundable deposit, financed by beverage companies, not taxpayers! The Maryland Bottle Bill has momentum! It passed the House Environment and Transportation Committee in the 2025 General Assembly, with the support of the Maryland Municipal League and dozens of environmental, civic, and faith groups. Now we need the support of Maryland’s counties. I urge you and the Howard County Government to ask our State legislators to support the Maryland Bottle Bill in 2026! Every year we wait, more than 4 billion more beverage containers enter the environment.