Recycling: beverage containers: convenience zones.

Existing law, the California Beverage Container Recycling and Litter Reduction Act, requires a distributor to pay a redemption payment for every beverage container sold or offered for sale in the state. The act requires the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery to annually designate convenience zones, as defined, statewide and requires at least one certified recycling center or location within every convenience zone that accepts all types of empty beverage containers and pays the refund value, if any, at one location, and that is open for business 30 hours per week. This bill, until July 1, 2017, would exempt from the requirement that each convenience zone be served by at least one certified recycling center (1) a convenience zone that was served by or exempted because of a recycling center that closed between January 1, 2016, and March 31, 2016, or that is closed as a result of an action taken by the department on or after July 1, 2016, and (2) a convenience zone that is in a jurisdiction with a land use restriction that prevents the siting or operation of a certified recycling center on or after July 1, 2016. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.