By Janice Sina
(May 29, 2026) — Most of us have waited in line at a grocery store bottle and can return center at some point, queuing up with our bulging bags, sneakers sticking to the floor with every step, to feed our containers into the machines one by one as it reads the bar code and credits us a dime at a time. Then we take our credit receipt into the store, do our shopping and come out with groceries, but no fun money for our efforts.
As of this month, there is an alternative that is quicker and close to home. Haddam Bottle and Can Return is officially open for business at 95 Bridge Road behind Tony’s Package Store. I met with owner Jay Vachhani recently to talk about his new venture. The building is a vast warehouse, packed with bottles and cans that have been sorted and bagged, and await pickup by various distributors. Toward the rear is a small office area. A counting machine takes center stage at the front entrance. “I got into this business because my dad owns the redemption center in East Hartford,” Jay said. “There are many redemption centers in Hartford County, but only one in Middlesex County, up in Middletown. We found it was a good opportunity to open one here.”
He paused for a moment to process a customer’s containers. It was a quick and easy process, passing the items down the chutes to be counted and dropped into waiting bins where they would be sorted. The customer walked away moments later with more than $40 in his pocket. Not a credit receipt. Cash. “Taking care of the customers is the easy part,” Jay says. “Our machines can sort and count 300 cans per minute so they’re in and out in no time.” The next step is more time consuming. The containers are then hand sorted by brand and bagged for pickup. Considering the mountains of bagged containers around the periphery of the warehouse, I could appreciate the time it took. Each brand is then picked up by a specific distributor. “For example,” Jay explains, “Coca-Cola has an agent who picks up all Coca-Cola products and some bottled water products, so we bag them separately. Another distributor is responsible for Pepsi products, juices and other bottled water products. And beer is picked up by other distributors.” These distributors pay Jay a handling fee of 3 ½ cents per non-alcoholic beverage container and 2 ½ cents per alcoholic beverage container in addition to the 10 cent deposit. “It doesn’t sound like much but we’re volume-based, so it adds up and that’s how we pay our customers and maintain our business overhead,” Jay says.
Watching customers come and go and listening to the conversations, it seems they appreciate having a redemption center nearby as well as the efficiency of the place. Jay plans to install two more counting machines and is looking to install a sorting machine with barcode-reading technology that will allow it to quickly sort and bag items by brand. Educating the customers so they know how to bring in the containers helps too. “For instance,” he says, “beer bottles returned in their original cases can be processed quickly. And we cannot take nips or vodka-based drinks as mandated by the state, so it helps to remove those items before coming in, to speed up the process.” Jay encourages feedback from his customers both at his center and in the comments section of his website, haddambottleandcanreturn.com.
I mentioned that I’d seen bottle and can drives sponsored by the Boy Scouts and wondered how this might fit into his plan. He said that the Boy Scouts use the cash from the donated containers for their various needs and he would be glad to be a part of this community effort. He has talked with the Haddam Boy Scouts and plans to talk with the East Haddam Troop.
Looking at the number of containers collected in just three weeks time, there is definitely a need for this service, especially one that is close by. I asked Jay what happens after the containers leave here. “As far as I know,” he says, “the distributors crush the cans in house and resell the aluminum. We can only do our part and count on others to do their part, too.” Haddam Bottle and Can Return is a promising new business that not only serves our local community and southern Middlesex County, it is also part of the bigger recycling effort.
