Many Californians are having a tough time recycling bottles and cans and getting back deposits as hundreds of recycling centers shutter throughout the state — but something else is going on behind the scenes that is making it even worse.  Here’s how it’s supposed to work:  For every can and bottle you recycle, you get back a five or...

As recycling centers shut down across the state, retailers who sell single-use beverages are supposed to take back the empties. But something else is going on. Lolita Lopez reports for the NBC4 News at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020. 

A California state senator on Thursday ended his effort to pass a bill requiring beverage distributors to create a new system to take back their own containers, though advocates said they will keep pushing the issue this year. Democratic Sen. Bob Wieckowski of Fremont admitted defeat after his bill fell four votes short of the 21 it needed to clear…

Eleven people have been arrested on suspicion of participating in a recycling fraud operation in Nevada, Arizona and California, including the operator of a Pacoima recycling center, officials said on Monday. The suspects are accused of smuggling out-of-state empty beverage containers into California to defraud the state’s Beverage Container Recycling Fund out of more than $2 million, according to Ken…

California lawmakers are considering upending the state’s struggling bottle and can recycling program by requiring beverage distributors to create a new system to take back their own containers, similar to one that has been successful in neighboring Oregon.

Riverside County Department of Waste Resources officials Monday reminded residents that two county landfills will accept discarded Christmas trees for recycling only until Saturday. The Badlands Landfill at 31125 Ironwood Ave. in Moreno Valley and the Lamb Canyon Landfill at 16411 Lamb Canyon Road in Beaumont will take trees for free until the end of the week, but after that,…

Do you still have your Christmas tree? The city of San Diego will continue accepting trees for recycling through Jan. 23. The 46th Christmas Tree Recycling program for residential customers kicked off on Dec. 26 and program features 17 drop-off locations across the city. “Recycling these trees helps us reduce the amount of waste going into the Miramar Landfill and…

Christmas produces a lot of joy…and garbage. Americans produce 25% more trash between Thanksgiving and Christmas, according to the EPA. Learn what should go into the recycle bin and what might be better suited for the landfill — or swapped out completely.

California is fining the nation’s largest pharmacy health care provider a record $3.6 million for failing to redeem deposits on bottles and cans at some of its locations, regulators said Monday. The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, better known as CalRecycle, said its investigation found that 81 of CVS Pharmacy’s 848 retail stores in California refused to redeem…

They paid their CRV deposits, but now can’t easily get their money back. Bay Area families told us they can’t turn in their recyclable cans and bottles anymore, and they’re missing out of hundreds of millions of dollars combined. NBC Bay Area Consumer Investigator Chris Chmura reports.

California consumers lost out on at least $308 million in nickel deposits on cans and bottles in 2018, largely because it’s increasingly difficult to find a place to recycle them, according to a new report made public Thursday.

California has charged five people with defrauding the state’s recycling program out of $80.3 million — the largest alleged fraud scheme in the program’s history, officials said Thursday.

Orange County Sanitation workers believe they’ve perfected the ‘toilet to tap’ recycling process and they brought bottled samples to Hollywood to have people try it out on Wedneday, June 21, 2017.