Shutting the lid on beverage container deposit fraud

Container deposit fraud is more than just buddies transporting some empty soda bottles across state lines. We’re talking about multimillion-dollar tax fraud schemes. Here’s how to prevent them.

As a grade-school-aged boy growing up in southwest lower-Michigan, I remember helping load up the car with emptied glass pop bottles that we’d take to our neighborhood grocery store in exchange for a few dollars. In the Midwest U.S., “pop” is the vernacular term for soft drinks made by such producers as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Dr Pepper and National Beverage. If you’re from the Northeast U.S., it’s simply “soda.” Southerners often call them all “Coke” even if they’re not brown. I still remember the clinking and clanking of those bottles in the car as we drove to the grocery store.

Michigan passed a bottle bill, or beverage container deposit law, in 1976. Even though it wasn’t the first state to do so (Oregon passed the first in 1971) at the time Michigan had the highest deposit — ten cents on airtight containers under one gallon composed of metal, glass, paper or plastic. Today, 10 states and one U.S. territory have container deposit laws.