PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • March 24, 2026
The bottle bill works because regular people take part in it. Which is why the current debate in Augusta about LD 2141 is worth paying attention to. The bill would direct a portion of unclaimed, or unredeemed, bottle deposits to two things Maine desperately needs: protecting lake water quality and helping preserve working farmland. The proposal would invest in the Lake Water Quality Restoration and Protection Fund and the Maine Working Farmland Access and Protection Program. Even after those investments, at least two-thirds of the unclaimed deposits would still stay in the redemption system. But if you listen to beverage distributors, you’d think the whole system might collapse if a portion of that money goes somewhere else. ~ Russell Voss, Gray