案例库 · 战略与领导 · 运营决策 · 1978–2025
这条还没译成中文，下面是英文原文。
Michigan put a dime on every bottle and got nine in ten back
A 10-cent refundable deposit gave empties a cash value, pushing redemption above 90% and making the state's litter problem pay for itself.
State of Michigan · beverage distributors and retailers · Michigan Department of Treasury
那一手
Michigan introduced the country's first dime deposit with its Bottle Deposit Law, enacted in 1978 as anti-litter legislation. The state needed to keep beverage containers off roadsides and out of landfills, and it chose to give the empty a cash value rather than to fine litterers.
A 10-cent deposit is added to the price of each eligible beer, pop, or other beverage container and refunded when the container is returned. Retailers that sell deposit containers are required to accept the empties in return, and the deposit is passed back to the consumer.
The mechanism worked because the empty became a small, refundable asset. Michigan's overall deposit rate reached as high as 95% and historically sat above 90%, giving the state one of the highest recycling rates in the country and keeping deposit containers out of the waste stream.
The state Treasury tracks deposits collected and refunded each year — for example 97.2% refunded in 1997 and 94% in 1999 — and the non-returned deposits create an escheat pool that funds bottle-bill enforcement, environmental cleanup and retailer handling.
为什么管用
- A refundable deposit turns the container into something worth returning, so collection requires no enforcement and no payment to a middleman.
- Because the deposit is charged at the point of sale, the incentive is automatically tied to the purchase.
- The deposit is uniform and enough to be worth claiming, so it is not a token, especially in the decades when 10 cents had real purchasing power.
- The state Treasury data gives a transparent, verifiable measure of the mechanism's effect via the refund rate.
可以搬走什么
The cheapest way to get something collected is to put a refund on it: a deposit converts a disposal problem into a small asset the consumer is motivated to recover.
后来呢
Decades of redemption rates near 90-97% made Michigan's deposit law the benchmark in the country, though rates have since slid as inflation eroded the real value of the dime (69.4% in 2025). The design became the model for container-return systems elsewhere.
资料来源
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