California isn’t alone in this. Other states charge fees for soda bottle and cans, usually .05 cents. Iowa did when I lived there back in the day.
Almost all states charge your a fee when you have your oil changed. I had to get a new battery for my car in November and they charge a fee for replacing the battery.
Give them a reason and they will charge you.
Even when your garbage is picked up those that sort out the plastic bottles for recycling are virtue signaling, when the reality is those get thrown in the land fills because recycling is not profitable.
battery for my car.
In PA, when you bring back a battery to buy another battery, the dealer is supposed to reduce the price of the battery by the value of the ‘core charge’ from the previous battery.
in my experience, they do that.
My husband worked at an auto parts store, and always gets the core charge off the battery he’s buying. The make the changeover more convenient, he’s kept one old battery at home to turn in when he buys a new one. No one seems to care if he returns a battery from a different vehicle.
What does the store do with the batteries? They store all the batteries till their battery recycle truck come and hauls them to an authorized recycle facility to have the lead, acid,an anything else recyclable treated the way the state wants. The state wants to keep them from being disposed of where the more toxic materials don’t end up in streams or groundwater.
Not that I ‘believe’ in it, I just know how it works. The core charge is pretty high, like $20.00.