Delaware’s bottle tax ends

DOVER, DELAWARE (12/1/2014) A fee on beverage bottle purchases to help fund state recycling efforts is ending.

The 4-cent per bottle tax had replaced an earlier 5-cent bottle deposit that had been in effect since the 1980s.

The bottle fee was a part of the state’s Unversal Recycling Law passed in 2010 to improve the state’s recycling efforts. Gov. Jack Markell, in announcing the “sunset” provision in the law which led to its demise today, said retailers should no longer be collecting the fee from customers.

The governor touted the success of the law in a statement that noted 42 percent of waste was diverted from Delaware landfills in 2013, better than a federal standard of 34.5 percent.

Markell said recycling programs funded with the bottle fee will still receive money from the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.