The Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) new rule for the Beverage Container Redemption Program became effective on May 8, 2017. Under the new rule only one distributor is permitted to register product labels of the same brand and act as the Initiator of Deposit (IoD). Therefore, a winery who sells product labels of the same brand to more than one ME wholesaler the winery is now responsible for registering product labels and initiating deposit. Members who sell to a Maine wholesaler should have received a Memorandum from DEP regarding the implementation of the new rule.
As a reminder, wine shipped directly to consumers in Maine is not subject to the bottle redemption law.
