The California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act.

Existing law, the California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act, requires the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery to annually designate convenience zones and requires that at least one certified recycling center that meets certain requirements be located within every convenience zone. The act requires dealers within a convenience zone where no recycling location has been established, or within a convenience zone that is unserved for 60 days and not exempt from convenience zone requirements, to submit an affidavit to the department stating that the dealer has met specified standards for redemption, including, among others, that the dealer is redeeming all empty beverage container types at all open cash registers or at one designated location on the dealer's premises, during all hours that the dealer is open for business. If the dealer does not submit that affidavit, existing law requires the dealer to pay $100 per day to the department, for deposit in the continuously appropriated California Beverage Container Recycling Fund, until a recycling location is established or until the dealer meets the standards for redemption specified in the affidavit provision. This bill, until March 1, 2020, would exempt from those duties dealers located in a convenience zone that was served by a recycling center that closed between August 1, 2019, and September 1, 2019, at the initiation of the recycler. The bill would also, until July 1, 2020, exempt from those duties a dealer located in an unserved convenience zone if a completed application for a recycling center located anywhere in the convenience zone is pending before the department and the dealer and the recycling center submit a letter to the department stating that the recycling center intends to serve that convenience zone. The bill, until July 1, 2020, would make such a recycling center eligible to receive handling fees for redeemed beverage containers once its application is approved. The act, until January 1, 2020, authorizes up to 5 limited-term recycling pilot projects, subject to department approval, that are designed to improve redemption opportunities in unserved convenience zones. The act subjects each pilot project to certain requirements, including, among others, that the pilot project not establish a redemption location outside of a convenience zone. This bill would extend the operation of that authorization until January 1, 2022, and would revise the pilot project requirements, including, among other revisions, prohibiting a pilot project from establishing a redemption location outside of the pilot project area rather than outside of a convenience zone. The bill would authorize the department, for the 2019–20 fiscal year to the 2021–22 fiscal year, inclusive, to expend up to a total of $5,000,000 from the fund to support the pilot projects. By authorizing expenditures from a continuously appropriated fund for a new purpose, the bill would make an appropriation. This bill would authorize the Director of Finance to approve the expenditure of up to $5,000,000 from the fund for supplemental payments to recycling centers if certain conditions are met, thereby making an appropriation. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.