AMES, Iowa — It has been years since people in Ames and Story County had a place to drop off cans and bottles, but now Ames Bottle and Can will fill that void.

The business sits at 5820 Lincoln Way, Suite 106 and just opened up in December because of the recently passed bottle bill.

“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.”

The new bottle bill will be law on January 1, 2023, and it 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.

The redemption center section of the bill is designed to keep redemption centers afloat or allow new ones to open.

Ames has not had a redemption center open for the surrounding community in over five years, so the demand is there.

“We were not expecting the actual quantity when we first opened up in December and on the first day when we were getting horse trailers we were like, ‘uh oh’,” said Johnathon Vaughn, co-owner of Ames and Can.

The company is currently looking for part time employees to hire to keep up with the demand the residents of Ames are showing.

“It’s good for the town of Ames and I hope they make some big bucks out of it too,” said Quentin Toresdahl as he was dropping off several garbage bags full of cans.

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