The Committee on Transportation and the Environment, chaired by Councilmember Charles Allen, held a public roundtable on July 9, 2026, to receive feedback on a revised draft of Bill 26-58, the Recycling, Refund, and Litter Reduction Amendment Act (the "bottle bill"). The meeting featured testimony from environmental advocates, local brewers and distillers, beverage wholesalers, retailers, and subject matter experts. No votes were taken; the hearing was for informational and deliberative purposes.
Recording in progress. Good morning, everyone. I'm Charles Allen. I'm the Ward 6 Council Member and Chair of the Council's Committee on Transportation and the Environment. Today is Thursday, July 9th, 2026, and we're meeting both in room 123 of the John A. Wilson building as well as of the Zoom virtual platform. The time is now 9 44 a.m. And I am calling to order this public round table of the committee. I'll note we'd initially plan for this to be taking place in room 500. The AV is out in that room, so we need to switch rooms. So thanks for everyone's flexibility. We'll have a little more intimate setting here as well for a good conversation today. Today's round table is going to focus on Bill 26-58, which is the recycling, refund, and litter reduction amendment act, commonly referred to as the bottle bill. Since the original public hearing on the bill was held by the Committee on Business and Economic Development on October 1st, 2025, as well as in conversations with wide variety of stakeholders, this committee took the rare step to share a revised draft of the bill that incorporates feedback to try and address some of the concerns that have been raised by local businesses and the industry while also preserving the bill's underlying and ultimate goal of reducing the number of recyclable containers that end up in the trash or in our waterways or other natural environments. Today, we're going to hear again from many of our local businesses, brewers and distillers, distributors, subject matter experts on recycling and deposit programs, legislators from other jurisdictions, and environmental groups to receive additional feedback on this revised draft, which has been circulated to witnesses as well as posted on the council website. Because not everyone has actually gone and read that. Let me briefly outline where the revised draft differs from the introduced version. There's three major categories for the changes that we have considered in updating the legislation. First, in order to reduce burdens on retailers, we adopted the recommendation from this former CBED committee to exempt all hotels, restaurants, bars, and retail establishments with less than 2,000 square feet, or with on-premises consumption from the requirement to redeem containers on site. We also capped the number of containers that may be redeemed at 250 per day, also consistent with CBED's recommendation to help address and prevent fraud, which is also the approach that's been taken in Connecticut's bottle law. The committee also struck language that would have increased the bottle deposit after five years if redemption targets in the bill have not been met. Second, to lower fees for small distributors, including brewers, distillers, and wine importers. The revised draft exempts all distributors that distribute less than two million containers from paying registration fees into the stewardship program. And distributors selling between two million and ten million containers per year would pay less than a cent per container. These entities are exempted from paying into the bottle program, like our larger distributors. However, small distributors must still register their products in the program, and the committee looks forward to testimony from our smaller distributors on whether this still creates a significant burden or not. Among the other changes, the committee has also included language to ensure that communities and businesses will be guaranteed to have access to container collection across the district to allow bids and other nonprofit entities to partner with the bottle program and clarifies how large redemption centers will function as a part of the program. Now, witnesses today were limited by invitation, but members of the public are still encouraged and are able to submit written testimony using the council's hearing management system at Limbs.dccouncil.gov backslash hearings. I want to turn to colleagues for any opening statements they have before I call our first panel. So we have the lead author of the bill, Councilmember Brianna Doe who's joined us, and I want to turn to you, Councillor Nadeau, for any opening statement you have. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for convening us today. It is an honor actually to be here at this round table because uh this bill has been such a labor of love for so many of the people in the room here, and your stewardship of it, pun intended, is uh is so important at this critical juncture. DC has a litter problem. Rivers, streets, sidewalks, alleys, yards, and everything has a cost. Disposing of a product or its packaging has a cost. In the case of beverages with disposable containers, there's a huge cost, and it's been paid by taxpayers. As chair of the public works and Operations committee, I've learned in great detail just how much the district has to budget to clean up litter. By some metrics, we spend more money per mile to clean our streets than any other city in the country, and 80% of that litter is comprised of beverage containers. Six hundred and seventeen million bottles and cans per year are distributed and sold in the district, and we are paying for every single one of them. And it's no wonder that the big beverage industry doesn't want this bill. They don't want to pay for the cost to clean up the mess they create. They're throwing everything at the wall. It'll cost consumers more for their beverages. Categorically false. They cannot point to a single study to back that up. Consumers get back every cent they pay for the deposit. Fraudsters will collect empty containers in Maryland and Virginia and bring them by the truckload to DC to redeem them, even though the legislation includes clear solutions to that issue. This is the same industry that fought off a proposed bottle bill in the 80s by scaremongering people saying the people would get AIDS from the bottle redemption.