Is it legal to take cans and bottles which were bought in another state to Michigan to collect the 10 cent refund?
While I suspect that your answer is correct, it is not clear from the article you link that the suspects would have been violating the law if they had bought properly marked cans in, say, Ohio and taken them to Michigan for redemption. It depends upon the meaning of the phrase “non-redeemable out-of-state cans.” Presumably, it means that a can/bottle on which deposit wasn’t paid is not allowed to be cashed in in Michigan. But given that they did it through the dummy process of a middleman and they used crushed cans, one wonders if the issue was the need to avoid trying to redeem cans that weren’t properly marked.
Again, I think you are correct, but I think we need a citation to Michigan’s statutes governing the recyclable refund program.
Ha! I was trying to remember which show I’d seen this in. Thanks, WhyNot! 
Yes, it’s illegal. I’m to lazy to cite, but the state government complains about it randomly, because they realize a loss in revenue. You can mention all the good reasons that supposedly exist for a deposit program all you want, but in the end it’s a tax. The drink manufacturers don’t lose anything; what the state “loses” is the difference between the sold and returned containers every year. So if 100 cans are sold this year, and only 70 are reclaimed, the state keeps the deposits on the 30 that weren’t claimed, less a small amount back to the manufactures to help pay for the program (in truth, it’s paid with higher beverage costs; just go out of state to see the differences).
Tell you what, try it and see if you get arrested. I’ll back you up and say I gave you all my credits because I don’t return my cans. It’s worth $0.10 to not get stand in line with people that have garbage bags full, get dirty doing it, and having no ability to wash your hands (well, Meijer has sinks, to be honest).
Interesting. This exact question came up some months ago, and the very same news story was quoted. They weren’t bringing individual cans across the border and returning them as consumers would; they were bringing in bundles of crushed cans and slipping them into the recycling chain.
Other than middleman schemes like that one, I can’t see why your plan would work: when the bottle refund began in Michigan (and I was a lad collecting cans), they had to be labeled as Michigan cans. If you went in with an unmarked can or a can from a different state, you got nothing. It was always disappointing to spot a promising Mountain Dew can in the bushes and then retrieve it, only to find that it wasn’t a Michigan can.
At the time, the Michigan refund was the highest around, and we loved it. A handful of cans was all that was necessary to finance a quick bite of junk food.
While it might be illegal I don’t see how you could be caught if you weren’t obvious and only cashed a small amount of cans at a time. Most of the cans of soda I get here in WI are marked for MI 10 cent refund. I’ve never seen a store that requires a receipt to get the deposit back. We go to MI all the time and we don’t do it because it is stealing but we always talk about it.
They might be able to tell from the printed code on the bottom of the can if it was distributed somewhere else if you were stopped and your cans confiscated.
No, if you look carefully at your cans anywhere in the country, it lists a whole lot of different states deposits on it, sometimes etched into the top of the can, sometimes in the painted artwork. Bottles will have it on the painted artwork.
“In an effort to improve the customer experience” all of the big stores now have machines for return bottles. These have you individually feed cans and bottles of different sizes into respective machines one by one. If you have multiple container types, you need a partner to help you, or stand in line behind the garbage-bag people a second or third time. Oh, the point is, no one is looking at bottles and cans; it’s all done by UPC. UPC’s wouldn’t be universal of they weren’t universal.
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(e3ssb545fasam445nlvgmou5))/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectName=mcl-445-574a
and see, http://www.deq.state.mi.us/documents/deq-wmd-swp-mibottledepositlawFAQ1.pdf
One thing I have experienced in michigan is some stores will not accept cans or bottles of product they do not sell. This sucks when you go to Hillers and have to leave with your Jones soda or Killians Red that the particular store doesn’t sell. My self I just throw them on the ground when the machine doesn’t accept the three or four odd “returnables” I brought with me. Sort of a tip to the people clean this stuff up I say.
Shortly after the Seinfeld episode with Kramer and Newman’s scheme aired, all the stores started sticking up warnings next to the return machines or in smaller stores without the machines next to the counter. They usually include at least part of the law in question, and look similar to the warnings about how it’s illegal to sell booze or smokes to underage people.
As I said in the other thread, I did this decades before Seinfeld. Coke bottles had 2 cent deposits in Boston and 5 cents in NY. A friend and I bought up coke bottles from fellow students (helped by a strike of delivery people which meant the empties were just sitting around) rented a truck, and drove them to NY. Government was not involved at all, so I can’t see how it was against the law. The stupid Coke company fell prey to a simple rule of economics.
Government IS involved, Voyager. They don’t charge deposits because Coke thinks its a good idea, or the store thinks its a good idea. They do it because the state has passed a law requiring it. And even if that wasn’t the case, it basically boils down to stealing if you recoup a deposit you never paid. Even if you steal from someone with no government involvement, it’s still stealing.
Furthermore, Coke doesn’t “[fall] prey to a simple rule of economics” in this scheme. The store you take the bottles/cans back to would be the one losing money when the number of deposits they had to pay out turned out to be higher than the number of deposits they originally took in.
Makes me wonder, however, what happens if you buy most of your drinks at StoreA, but also some at StoreB, but then because you have no freakin clue what you bought where when you’re going back to return them, and they’re all intermingled in bags in your trunk anyway, if you return them all to StoreA, isn’t that going to be a problem for StoreA in the long run? Or are there enough other people buying most at StoreB, a few at StoreA, returning all at StoreB to make it all even out in the end?
And what about drinks out of vending machines? Those get charged a deposit at the machine then get returned to StoreA, too. There’s no method whereby you can return anything to the vending machine. Is StoreA just screwed here and the operator of the vending machine making out like a bandit pocketing the deposits?
Like I said, this was before government mandated deposits. In the old days bottling companies had reusable glass bottles, worth at the time about ten cents a piece. They obviously wanted them, back, but couldn’t charge that much of a deposit, so they charged a bit less. Unlike cans, the bottles were washed and used again. You are probably too young to remember this, but maybe you shoud believe what I clearly wrote. There was no government involvement.
We didn’t deal with any stores, by the way. The bottling company delivered them to our dorm, and picked up the empties. We drove the ones we sold in NY to the bottling plant on 34th street and the East River. I forget how stores handled deposits - I think they charged at checkout and paid upon return. With direct delivery, we never bought at stores.
The simple principle is that if a commodity is priced differently in two places, there will be a tendency for people to buy at the cheap location and sell at the expensive one. That’s what we did. There was also a thriving trade between the Carolinas and the Northeast in cigarettes - which is illegal. Drugs from Canada is yet another illustration of the principle.
BTW, people losing money does not mean that a law of economics is being violated! The Boston plant saw 10 cent bottles disappear while only getting 2 cents, while the New York plant got 10 cent bottles by paying 5 cents. The price difference guarantees that this happens. That’s why prices equalize unless there are either physical barriers or legal barriers - and the legal barriers get broken all the time. People buying textbooks in England and reselling there here is yet another example.
Oh, I remember returning glass bottles, and I remember it being the same deal that cans (and later on plastic bottles) fall under, it was just a little heavier lugging those bottles to the car. That’s just my experience, if it was different where you were, fine, whatever, that’s life.
Sure, but here it’s not buying things cheap and selling them at a profit, it’s paying a deposit and instead of claiming that deposit back fooling someone else into giving “back” a higher deposit that was never actually paid. The containers aren’t actually a commodity. The offer is not “we pay 5 cents for any and all containers” it’s “bring us back the containers you took from us and we give you back the 5 cents we took from you”.
That’s here and now, obviously. For all I know, maybe they did actually have a standing offer for any and all containers back when you were returning them (since they had an actual use for them). WAG, I suppose it could possibly have been cheaper to pay the higher deposit, even to people not actually entitled, than to make a whole new bottle.
Never meant to imply that it did. Just that someone exploiting this for gain is taking money from someone else’s bottom line.
BTW, sorry if I in any way impuned you by applying todays rules to your history lesson. While it’s pretty clearly illegal now, back then it probably was not as cut & dry.
Your name isn’t Angel is it?:dubious:
I do not save cans for myself, But i can’t just throw them away. They go into a bin behind the garage and are free to be picked up by whom ever wants them.
I started that after seeing some elderly picking through the trash for cans.
i just can’t pitch them anymore.
Until three years ago, I spent several years living in MI. As a Diet Coke addict, I can rack up quite a few cans in a week. The grocery store where I would return my cans had these easy-to-use machines where you put all your cans in them, got a receipt for your returned depost and either went to the customer service line for the cash or used it as part of your payment if you decided to shop after returning the cans.
On several occassions, I would spend a few days in Ohio. As I was in the habit of hanging onto empty cans, those Ohio coke cans would sometimes get mixed up with my MI cans. Then did my weekly can return after an Ohio trip, these machines seem to have gotten smarter and rejected my Ohio cans. Th MI cans probably has something included in its bar code that identifies it as a MI can.
Yes, there was government mandated recycling of glass bottles also. This was long before it. Recycling hadn’t been invented in 1972.
Gee, I don’t remember signing any such forms when we bought coke. Plus, we were not fooling anyone, nor did we try to. When you drive a truck with over 200 24 bottle cases up, no one is going to think you’ve just come from cleaning your attic.
The purchasers were getting a good deal - paying five cents for a bottle worth ten. (Not a WAG - we researched this.) The sellers lost, but we actually gave them a chance to buy up the bottles, and they didn’t take it. They had the option of not delivering to us any more, and they threatened that, but we were too good a customer. They sold dozens of cases to our dorm every week, with no middle man.
BTW, the bottles had the point of manufacture on the bottom, and thus we knew that many came from outside. And we went into the NY warehouse, which is a damn impressive place for a Coke lover. 200 cases was nothing.
Well of course, but I was involved in negotiations for expensive software, and any time we got ourselves a discount we were taking money from the bottom line of the seller - and adding it to ours. There was a union issue at the receiving end, but no problem at all about the transfer of bottles. I’m sure they went off and said that these long haired college kids are getting stranger every day.
I agree it is illegal now. Then, there were no government rules at all about this. There was no tax on the deposits, as far as I could tell. My friend became a lawyer, in fact an Assistant Attorney General at the state level. If I see him at our reunion. I’ve actually never seen the Seinfeld episode.
This was basically a hack, from before that terms was more or less exclusively tied to computers. It is probably a more legal hack than most I’m aware of.