It's a quarter for boxed wine!! Really though, this title is misleading. It should say "California Redemption Value deposit charge to be added to liquor and juice containers starting in January."
They add it to the price of the product at checkout, it's a "deposit" that you are able to get back if you want to save up your containers and drive them to the recycling center.
I see this mostly benefiting people who make a few dollars a day digging through public (and not so public) trash receptacles looking for things with CRV to turn in.
For things that can't be recycled, I would agree. But if it can be, then it still needs to be brought to a recycling facility to make that happen. Without this incentive, a lot more of it will end up in landfills.
If gov'ts had kept on top of the companies and created prohibitive rules around single-use plastics (and chemical use ... see PFOS/PFAS) in the 70's, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Instead they just let companies do whatever they wanted 'cause capitalism is god.
And now it's so far gone that doing the bare minimum for the environment is great for their image so let's dump more money into advertising that than actually making a meaningful change.
If the companies had to pay per bottle, do you really think they’d still be using single use packaging like that?
If it's the same 5/10/25c per container, then they very likely will. Consumers have already decided that this price is worth paying for the convenience, so it makes little difference if companies paid this and passed on the cost to consumer, or if it's transparently shown as a separate reimbursable fee. In the end, all the costs get passed on to consumers and it's left to us to vote with our wallets. I think the main issue is that the cost of producing containers doesn't reflect the true long term cost, and the solution to that is probably to impose a tax based on the amount of material used. That way, consumers making the choice that's right for them will also mean making the choice that's right for everyone else.