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Wine and liquor bottles are processed at Our Planet Recycling center in San Francisco. California lawmakers are considering adding a 10 cent deposit fee on wine and liquor in glass bottles as well as plastic, aluminum and box containers.

Workers drop sorted recyclables from customers into cans at Our Planet Recycling center in San Francisco. Less than a third of wine and booze bottles are recycled in the state, causing hundreds of millions of them to wind up in landfills every year.

California wine and liquor drinkers could soon pay up to 10 cents more when they buy an adult beverage at the store — a deposit they could theoretically get back if they recycle their empty bottles.

Legislators have proposed to add liquor and wine containers to the state’s bottle-deposit recycling program, which consumers must already pay a nickel or dime deposit into every time they buy a bottle of beer or can of soda.

The state’s bottle recycling program has been around since the late 1980s. But wine and distilled spirits have long been excluded, due in large part to opposition from powerful industry groups.

Now, after years of failed attempts, an effort to expand the program to include wine and spirit bottles has received a jolt of momentum at the state Capitol this year largely because wine and liquor makers have changed their tune.

Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, is carrying SB1013, which would require buyers to pay the same deposit on all alcoholic beverages starting Jan. 1, 2023. It would include wine and hard alcohol sold in glass as well as plastic, aluminum and box containers.

A customer walks by a signboard showing items accepted for a deposit return at Our Planet Recycling center in San Francisco.

Supporters said the bill is necessary because less than a third of wine and booze bottles are recycled in the state, causing hundreds of millions of containers to wind up in landfills every year. Californians typically buy about 1.3 billion wine and liquor bottles per year, according to the Container Recycling Institute, an advocacy group.

Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, said the bill has seen strong support in the Legislature because many see it as a matter of “fairness” that wine and spirit makers face the same requirements as other beverage companies.

“Frankly, it’s long overdue,” he said. “The soft drink companies have been doing this, the beer companies have been doing this.”

Dodd, who worked with winemakers in his district on the issue, said wine and spirit companies support the proposal this year because they want to have more clean, recycled glass so they can reduce the amount of climate-warming emissions from their operations.

The industry’s stance is a dramatic turnabout after it has repeatedly opposed bills to make wine and spirit bottles part of the bottle-deposit program for decades, largely over cost concerns.

A spokesperson for the Wine Institute, an association that represents 1,000 California wineries and affiliated businesses, said the group supports the bill because it “provides the most viable path to achieve our recycling goals.”

Mark Murray, director of Californians Against Waste, a recycling advocacy group, said the bill could also help save the state’s bottle-recycling system. The program has been in a downward spiral for years as redemption centers across the state closed in droves.

He said increasing the number of glass bottles and other containers that can be redeemed for cash will provide more revenue to help keep struggling recycling centers in business.

“It will probably double the recycling rate for wine and distilled spirits that are in glass,” Murray said. “It’s a huge breakthrough.”

Enrique Tezera dumps sorted clear glass, including wine and liquor bottles, at Our Planet Recycling center in San Francisco. California lawmakers are considering a 10 cent deposit on wine and liquor bottles to boost recycling.

SB1013 passed the Senate with unanimous, bipartisan support and now must be approved by the state Assembly. Despite the strong support, the bill has stirred concerns among some recycling advocates who say the state already isn’t providing consumers with an easy way to reclaim their bottle deposits.

California’s bottle-deposit program is running on life support. Recycling centers, where consumers redeem empty bottles and cans for their deposit money, have closed en masse in the past five years because of factors such as global tumult in the recycling market and soaring operating costs.

Only about 69% of bottles and cans bought in California are recycled today, down from about 85% at the program’s peak in 2013. There are 1,258 recycling centers in the state today, down from about 2,500 a decade ago.

Jeff Donlevy, general manager of Mings Resources-East Bay, a company that processes recycled bottles and cans, said he’s concerned the bill would add more material to a struggling recycling system. He said he supports the bill only if it’s amended to provide more assistance to keep recycling centers open.

“If people are in areas without redemption centers, it’s going to be a tax because they can’t find a place to redeem the containers to get their deposit back,” Donlevy said.

The bill would require consumers to pay a deposit of 10 cents on bottles of wine and liquor with more than 24 ounces and 5 cents for containers with less than 24 ounces. Wine bottles and fifths of liquor typically contain 25.4 ounces, so most consumers would pay the dime deposit.

Legislators have suggested that adding wine and spirit bottles to the program could provide CalRecycle, the state’s recycling agency, with additional revenue to help open new redemption centers.

A legislative analysis of SB1310 projects it could generate a surplus in the “low hundreds of millions of dollars annually.” The bottle-deposit program already has a $635 million surplus because the state’s recycling rate has plummeted, meaning fewer consumers are reclaiming their nickel and dime deposits.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has already proposed to spend $330 million of that surplus on programs to boost recycling and open more redemption centers. Newsom and legislators are still negotiating the details.

But some recycling advocates are skeptical that adding wine and spirit bottles to the program will increase revenue, as the Legislature estimates.

A customer sorts his glass bottles before getting in line to have them weighed at Our Planet Recycling center in San Francisco for redemption.

An analysis from the Container Recycling Institute projects that the bill would be a net drain on CalRecycle because glass bottles have a much lower scrap value than aluminum cans or plastic bottles, thereby requiring the state to pay more to offset recycling costs.

Susan Collins, the institute’s president, said while she supports the intention to increase glass recycling, SB1013 needs to be paired with a strong plan to open more recycling centers.

She said she’s also skeptical of a provision in the bill that she estimates could result in waste haulers being paid $46 million more per year to process glass bottles tossed in blue curbside recycling bins — a material they already handle today.

Californians who don’t want to take their containers to redemption centers can toss them in blue recycling bins. But many of those bottles and cans are contaminated by other waste and consumers don’t get their deposits back. Collins said the waste haulers shouldn’t get “windfall” payments for that work.

“To be polite, it’s not a wise investment of government funds,” Collins said. “We don’t need to be writing a $46 million check every year and not getting any new recycling as a result of it.”

Dustin Gardiner (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner

Dustin Gardiner is a state Capitol reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. He joined The Chronicle in 2019, after nearly a decade with The Arizona Republic, where he covered state and city politics. Dustin won several awards for his reporting in Arizona, including the 2019 John Kolbe Politics Reporting award, and the 2017 Story of the Year award from the Arizona Newspapers Association. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, camping, reading fiction and playing Settlers of Catan. He's a member of NLGJA, the association of LGBTQ journalists.