Consumer body accuses Rami Levy supermarkets of violating bottle deposit law

Israel Consumer Council seeks court backing for class action lawsuit after receiving over 1,000 complaints about difficulties returning recyclables, getting refunds for deposits

Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter

Israelis shop at a Rami Levy supermarket in Modiin on July 21, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)
Israelis shop at a Rami Levy supermarket in Modiin on July 21, 2022. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

The Israel Consumer Council is seeking court approval of a class action lawsuit against Rami Levy, after receiving more than 1,000 complaints about the supermarket chain’s stores refusing to accept bottles for recycling and deposit fees.

The filing, submitted to the Beersheba District Court on December 18 and announced by the council this week, alleges that Rami Levy does not allow bottles to be returned manually when collection machines are not functioning, and limits the hours in which it accepts the recycled bottles.

The request also cites cases in which stores have returned the deposit through credit vouchers rather than cash, contrary to the law.

Since 2001, when the government passed the Deposit Law on Beverage Containers, a refundable sum, usually of 30 agorot ($0.08), has been added to the cost of all canned beverages, along with glass and plastic bottles ranging from 100 milliliters to 1.5 liters in size, to encourage people to return them after use. Since December 2021, the law has also included containers of 1.5-5 liters.

But implementation has been anything but smooth.

According to a July 2023 report by the Knesset Research and Information Center cited in the application, a bottle deposit complaints hotline established by the Environmental Protection Ministry in December 2021 and operated by the consumer council has received 9,010 complaints. Of these, 60 percent were filed over stores’ failure to accept beverages marked with deposit labels.

Court rulings have since determined that the return of beverage containers must not be limited to certain hours and that obstacles should not be placed before those asking to return bottles in exchange for a deposit.

The application said that between 2022 and 2024, the council received 1,017 complaints against Rami Levy — 139 in 2022, 323 in 2023 and 555 in 2024.

It alleged that Rami Levy stores refused to accept beverage containers for which deposits had been paid on purchase, limited the number of containers that could be refunded on a given day and the times when bottles could be returned, issued refunds only as vouchers rather than cash, and even refused to honor those vouchers after the day on which they were produced. It further charged that the company refused to accept beverage containers from minors, including in cases where parents were present, and that customers had been subjected to “humiliating and contemptuous behavior” by Rami Levy employees.

The council said requests to the company to change its behavior had proved fruitless and that these were not one-off mistakes, or oversights. “The evidence gathered indicates that the Deposit Law is being systematically and intentionally violated by the respondent,” it wrote.

The bottle deposit complaints hotline can be reached at 03-5100190.

A request for comment from the company’s legal adviser was not answered by press time.

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