New Bottle and Cans Redemption Center in Ames (Featured on WHO TV 13 News)
We were featured on WHO TV 13 News broadcast before our opening last year. Ames had not had a redemption center open for the surrounding community in over five years, so the demand is there.
The new bottle bill which went into place on January 1, 2023 increases the handling fee for redemption centers from one cent to three. Once the bill was signed last summer by Governor Reynolds, two business partners decided to start looking into it.
J.L. Vaughn and Evan Burger said they were inspired by this year's the changes to Iowa’s bottle bill, which increased handling fees for redemption centers, and decided to start their own.
Although there have been redemption centers in Nevada, Boone and Ankeny, Ames hasn’t had a center since January 2015, when longtime business Ames Area Redemption Center on East Lincoln Way closed its doors.
“Someone should do something about this and it’s like maybe we are the people to step up,” said Evan Burger, co-owner of Ames Bottle and Can. “And of course when it passed we said wow let’s take a look. This would actually make sense in Ames, so we sat down and ran the numbers, and it looked pretty viable.”