Repeal the Bottle Return Law Immediately!

I hate Oregon’s stupid bottle return law. It’s a hassle to consumers and it wastes resources.

Here’s how the law works: For every bottle or can of beverage I buy, I am charged a 5 cent deposit that is supposed to ensure that I return the container to the store rather than throw it away. When I return the container to the store, they give me a refund of my deposit. At the stores with automated return machines, you have to feed the containers into the machine, where the barcode is scanned to ensure that it came from that store, and then the container is crushed immediately.

If I crush the can myself to make storage more efficient, then the barcode can’t be read and the store doesn’t give me back my nickel. If I remove the label from a bottle, then the barcode can’t be read and I’m out the nickel that is rightfully mine. If you hold a party, guests inevitably forget these things and then you’re out the deposit!

If I buy a store brand of soda (say, Trader Joe’s, Safeway Select, or Big K), then I have to take it back to the store chain where I purchased it to get my nickel back. If you shop at multiple chains, then you end up either having to drive across town to the other store when you are taking your cans back, or instead you choose only to drink the more-expensive brand-name sodas so that you are sure that you won’t be inconvenienced when you return them. This is a waste of resources - gasoline, money, and time.

The bottle return areas of most stores are nasty, smelly places that have long lines for the few machines that aren’t perpetually “out of service”. You have to drag your sticky bags of cans and bottles to the machines, wait in line to feed them into the machine one-by-one, and then take your receipt inside the store, where again you wait in line to get your money back from the cashier. Most stores limit you to 144 containers a day, which means that you can’t stockpile the containers to minimize the times you have to do this foul task. This is a waste of time.

“But it’s only a nickel,” some say. Yes, it is - but it’s my nickel, a nickel I’ve already earned once by using my time, and now I am being forced to earn the damn thing again by wasting my time to return the f---ing container.

“But if we didn’t have the law, the cans would be tossed into the trash or littering the highways,” others say. You know what? When I lived in Washington, we had recycle bins where I could put the can when I was done with it, and it would be handled by the sanitation engineer with nary another thought about it. I didn’t feel that I was losing more money every time I used the recycle bin, nor did I get angry because I had to waste my time in line at the bottle return area of the local store.

The more I think about it, the more pissed I get.

Oregon’s bottle return law is wasteful, inconvenient, and stupid. It must be repealed!

PS-I found some interesting information after I wrote this post, to wit:

Oregon passed the first Bottle Deposit Law in 1971. This state was at the vanguard of the sophomoric movement (only 10 other states have fallen for it in 30 years), and these idiots are proud of it!

On the other hand, Washington has been steadily increasing its recycling rate without a draconian bottle deposit law. In the above-linked Oregon House Resolution celebrating the 30th anniversary of the baneful Bottle Return Law, the legislature noted that the overall solid waste recycle rate in 2000 was 38%. In Washington that same year, without the "benefit" of such an overbearing law, the overall recycle rate was 34.82%. That statistical insignificance doesn't justify the concomitant inconvenience and waste that Oregonians suffer with daily!

For an overall comparison, Washington's best recycling year on record (2004, the most recent year for which there's data) was 41% of all materials, whereas Oregon's overall rate was 45%. Again, this is statistically insignificant compared to the inconvenience and waste engendered by such stupid legislation. (Read the data yourself: Washington ['86-'04, XLS], Oregon [2004, PDF])

Comments

[Christopher Ritter]

Ken! E-mail me dude!

Ritter out

[Joolz]

Next time I ask you to go return bottles with me a simple "NO" will suffice!

[Carl Strohmeyer]

Oregon’s Bottle bill has become the laughing stock of the recycling industry. Back in 1993 when (out of necessity) I started recycling cardboard in California, the paper recycler told me that California was thinking of going the way of Oregon, he stated that funny thing was that Oregon and Michigan were the laughing stocks of the industry and that if California went the way of Oregon, they would pull out, even though they did not even handle cans or bottles. Problem is Oregon’s system pushes out private recyclers (outside of the companies that make the good for nothing redemption machines). Vastly more people are employed by California’s system which also pays scrap value and allows recyclers to profitably pay for paper and other items that here in Grants Pass are useless. Also there is not the dangerous contamination of dirty cans being placed in shopping carts or handled by store clerks.
I personally have picked cans, bottles and paper here in Grant Pass to take to California where I could make money and have been heckled with profanity by business owners here in Grants Pass (The 76 station on Rogue River Hwy was one), what kind of recycling environment do we really have here? Answer, NONE.

By Carl Strohmeyer