New Law Could Restrict Michigan Bottle Return Times

Ever since the pandemic started it has been a nightmare dealing with bottle returns and now a new law could restrict bottle return times.

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Michigan Bottle Return Issues Began During Pandemic

I get during the pandemic that shutting down the bottle returns at stores was out of safety and not knowing what COVID-19 would have in store for the community in the early stages.

However, families with lots of members wound up having stockpiles of returnable bottles and cans which made returns a little difficult once stores started taking them again. Aside from people bringing truck and car loads of returns, most stores limited their hours of taking returns which sucked because I work long and late hours and could barely make it to the store in time to return mine.

New Michigan Bottle Return Law Could Restrict Return Times

As I mentioned earlier, during the pandemic many stores limited their bottle return times, but once things returned to normal the bottle return times did not go back to normal hours for a lot of stores with some limiting return times to just a few hours only. If you work a full day it makes it almost impossible to return your bottles and cans.

There is a new bill that if passed and comes into law, bottle return times will be restricted but this may not be a bad thing for the consumer.

This proposed new bill will hold the stores more accountable for making bottle returns. According to WOOD, the new law would require a store that sells bottles and cans to also have to have a return at their store and be able to accept them during their normal business hours or from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. If a store doesn't sell the product they do not have to accept the return but if they sell it, they are going to have to cough up the coin in return.

This is a bill that hope makes it into law. There is a big box store that sells some root beer that my son and I like but they don't take back returnables but have no problem charging me the 10 cents per bottle. I try to return them to other stores but most of them don't sell that brand so I'm usually out of the money. This new bill would fix that and bottle returns would be open later so I could drop mine off after work.