August 10, 2025
Local NewsState & National

Repeal the bottle bill? Local redemption center owner says it won't happen

By Caleb Nelson

Calvin Edwards, owner of Twin Oaks Redemption Center in Fontanelle, doesn't think the current bottle bill, enacted in 1978, will be changed because of the support it gets from the Department of Natural Resources. If people have nowhere to redeem cans and it's not overly convenient to recycle them, Edwards predicts they'll end up in road ditches, which the DNR wouldn't support. Edwards is pictured with Julie Blazek, who also works at the redemption center. (Photo by)

When the Iowa Legislature begins its session next week in Des Moines, lawmakers will hear from business lobbyists who are hoping they can make a bigger push than they ever have to get the state's bottle bill revamped. It first went into effect April 1, 1978.

The bill includes a nickel deposit Iowans pay on carbonated cans and bottles. Under the proposed measure, grocery stores would be freed from the need to redeem bottles and cans. As a result, recycling programs would be expanded to include those beverage containers and there would be no need for redemption centers either, like Twin Oaks Redemption Center of Fontanelle.

Iowa's law currently covers all carbonated and alcoholic beverages. About 1.65 billion containers are redeemed annually across the state. Over 2 million of them are redeemed at Fontanelle's mom and pop establishment managed by Calvin Edwards. Twin Oaks is the lone redemption center in Adair or Adams Counties.

"The one in Greenfield closed and someone thought we ought to open one up in Fontanelle, so we did," Edwards said. "It's a space in our building we didn't use. We send out a semi load a week between Pepsi, Coke, and everybody. It's over 50,000 cans a week [that we send out]."

Edwards' can redemption endeavor has been in addition to his woodworking art he sells out of the front of his building just off the southeast corner of Fontanelle's town square. He creates live edge furniture and other creations, meaning the wood he uses remains as it is found. If the top of a table is jagged, it is left in that state. Such woodwork has large demand.

Edwards also endorses and sells the carving creations of Steve Bakerink and Elvin and Linda Ray in his store.

"I give them the wood, they bring something back and I buy it off of them," Edwards stated, adding the redemption center is a draw for people to visit Fontanelle. "We try to be open when the banks [or any other businesses] are open."

With the current setup, beverage makers are the ones who cash in the most. Leaders from Atlantic Coca-Cola Bottling Company, for instance, shared in a report by the Des Moines Register recently that they support the current bill as it stands.

"They'd go in the ditch or the landfill if they weren't redeemed. They say only 48 percent of them get returned. Coke, Pepsi and Budweiser like it because if you're the Casey's store they charge you a 5-cent deposit on that and then they get their money before you sell it," Edwards said.

Julie Blazek formerly worked in retail in Greenfield but works at Twin Oaks now. She has seen a need that has been met by the redemption center coming to town just more than three years ago.

"We get thanked a lot by people in the community because they have a place to take their cans," she said.

When asked whether he thinks the bottle bill will go away anytime soon, Edwards doesn't think it will.

"There's enough behind it that [The Department of Natural Resources] doesn't see it going away," he said.