How does the Oregon program "know" if a returned bottle is bona fide or fraudulent (from out of state)? I don't see how substituting units of a fungible quantity, which identical bottles seem to be, can have the consequences you suggest.
If OBRC collects a dime on 2.0 billion bottles per year ($200M deposit revenue), with an assumption that 20% of those will not end up being returned (resulting in $40M in slippage) and has overall annual budget costs of $34M, they are ever so slightly profitable.
Just a small amount of "excess" returns (bottles for which OBRC did not initially collect the dime, but pays out the dime) can push the overall program into the red. In the example above, only a 3% increase in return rate (from 80 to 83%) pushes the program into the red.
You seem to be saying that if the scheme somehow becomes more successful than expected, they stand to go into the red. Maybe so. But this is surely the case whatever source the "excess" or unexpected returns come from.
If you're claiming that the scheme is currently funded in such a way that something like a 3% improvement in return rate (fraudulent or genuine, OBRC can't tell) is a problematic financial event, then I suppose I get it.
The externality argument based on the cost of landfill (made by another commenter) is sensitive to whether the bottles come from out of state.
> How does the Oregon program "know" if a returned bottle is bona fide or fraudulent (from out of state)?
The program doesn't on a per bottle bases, but the effectiveness at dealing with the problem the program aims to solve (local landfilling recyclable containers) is impacted by the substitution; in the context of the function served, imported bottles that would not otherwise be imported are not fungible with local bottles.
If return rate hits 100% then it's a success IMO. Oregan has then successfully ensured that for every bottle used in their state that they also recycle one. Does it matter if it's a non-Oregan bottle?
And having people drive bottles in from outside states, presumably burning fossil fuels in the process, kinda defeat much of the point behind recycling in the first place.
Someone has to pay for the costs of the program (OBRC program costs are around $34M/yr per a slide deck I found and seem to currently be funded by slippage in return rate).
If Oregon returns hit 100%, leaving no funds to pay for the program, the program isn't likely to continue without state taxpayer funding (currently, it's funded from the program itself and not the state's taxpayers).
As a theoretical point, even with a 100% return rate, it's still possible to make money on the float. Buy a 12-pack, deposit $1.20, return 1 week later, get $1.20 back, but in the meanwhile that buck-and-change could make ~1/50¢ in interest.
The same report says they do about 2 billion containers / year, which at 10¢/container is $200M. In the optimistic case of 1 year between purchase and return, assuming 2% interest, that's $4M. Assuming 1 week, I think it's $100K, so not much.
A more likely income source is the profit from selling relatively clean metal, glass, and PET. That report says 151.0 M Aluminum Cans per quarter. I see numbers around 2¢/can for the metal value, so that's $3M/quarter or call it $10M/year.
So even with 100% return rate, there is still money coming in. Just (as you say) not enough to pay for the program.
In Iowa the stores read the bar code and will not accept a bottle/can if it couldn't have been bought at that store. One side effect is nobody buys store brand as it has to go back to that store, while "coke" can be returned to any store.
If there really was a problem I'd expect to see a different barcode for cans/bottles sold in Oregon vs other states.
Years ago we did it by barcode. It sounds like there is some reason that does not work now, but back when I would bother to return soda cans, the machine that collected/crushed them would scan the barcode and reject the out-of-state ones.
