Bucking recent trends, an Aroostook County redemption center is flourishing just seven weeks after opening with new owners, who attribute their success in part to a recent overhaul of the state’s recycling program for bottles and cans.
“I was told it was going to be tough to even pay the mortgage because it was going to be really slow, but we are climbing, so it is super exciting,” said Adam Bolz, who owns and runs Nickel-Back Redemption Center in Houlton with partner Amanda Fickle.
Before opening the North Street facility, which was formerly called Graham Redemption Center, Bolz set a weekly goal of redeeming 25,000 pieces. Since December, the business has been surpassing that number, he said.
“In the first month, we had over 115,000 pieces,” Bolz said. “January is on pace to beat that, and January, February and March are the worst months for redemption.”
Prior to changes that were made to Maine’s returnable beverage container law in 2023, many of the state’s more than 300 redemption centers were forced to close, scale back hours or run at a deficit because their revenue couldn’t keep up with rising costs due to inflation, according to the Natural Resources Council of Maine.
But two new state laws, designed to help keep the recycling program alive, increased the handling fee for redemption centers, reduced excessive sorting requirements, increased distributor pick-ups and promised assistance with the cost of the required plastic bags for sorting and pick-up.
“They changed the whole bottle bill and they gave the redemption centers a raise,” Bolz said. “We went from 4.5 cents to 6 cents per item. Annually that’s a 20 percent raise, the way I look at it.”
Additionally, Bolz credits some of their early success to extended hours, no limits on the number of bottles dropped and a change in the appearance and flow of the center.
While redemption centers have a reputation for being messy, smelly and cramped, the owners of Nickel-Back Redemption have worked to avoid those traits. The center is open, organized and clean, and it lacks the telltale odor of what might have been in the returned bottles and cans.
After taking over the business, Bolz ripped out sorting stations that had been in the middle of the old center for 40 years and over time had grown moldy. He moved all the sorts for cans, bottles and glass by size and name brand along the walls, leaving the center space open, he said.
Each bin is labeled with the name and size of what goes into each sort.
“He’s so humble, but he’s so smart,” said Fickle. “When he has something in his head, he just does it. He thinks about it and then thinks of how he can improve things. He came up with the whole system here, with the tables and the grates.”
The new bottle bill has simplified the sorting requirements for redemption centers, cutting down on their overall amount of work, Bolz said.
“They used to sort into 160 different bins, and now we are down to 45,” he said, adding that in July, the new bill is slated to reduce the sorts into an even smaller number through a co-mingling agreement with the major distributors like the Coca-Cola Co.
Furthermore, there used to be a 300-item limit on how many returnables customers could bring to what’s now Nickel-Back, but Bolz removed the limit, which he thinks has helped bring in a lot more business. Additionally, if customers have not pre-counted their returnables, he will do it for them.
On Thursday, a customer came in after dropping off a truckload of 1,281 pieces the day before and was shocked to get $65.
“Really? I didn’t think I had that many,” she said.
Thursday is pick-up day, meaning all that has been collected throughout the week gets picked up by two companies, Maine Distributors and Returnable Services. Bolz is paid the handling fee weekly by each distributor, he said.
The items are sorted into state-required plastic bags that run $65 per roll for about 260 bags, and Bolz goes through four rolls a month, but he is hoping the state will soon help with the cost of the bags.
Bolz and Fickle moved to Haynesville from Cleveland, Ohio four years ago. While they were looking to buy a business after they finished building a home on 86 acres, they had not really considered a redemption business.
“In Ohio, we didn’t have redemption, so it was all brand new to us,” Bolz said, adding that he used to own a drive-thru beverage business and a health and wellness center.
This week, Bolz was awarded a $5,000 Southern Aroostook Development Corp. microeconomic grant to improve his business. The couple plans to use it for exterior signage, paint and an outdoor drop-off cage.
“We’re excited to grow the business and improve it and put our own little spin on everything,” Fickle said. “It’s all the little details, and seeing everybody’s reaction to it.”
