Editorial

Our annoying container law

Legislators congratulated themselves last spring for expanding the Oregon Bottle Bill to include, starting in January 2009, water bottles. But they didn’t improve the container-return law itself. They didn’t do anything to make it less annoying.

What’s annoying about it? How about when the machine says, “This container is not authorized at this store,” or words to that effect.

You can try to remember where those lemonade cans or microbrew bottles came from, and if you remember, take them back there. But you can’t remember. And in any case you’re not going to drive all over town in order to redeem a few five-cent deposits. The gas alone would cost more. So you toss the rejects in the trash. Some recycling!

A few legislative sessions ago, defenders of the bottle law touted these redemption machines as the answer to the complaints that counting cans in the stores was costing too much money and was a dirty job that nobody should have to do. But listen to what a reader who moved to the mid-valley two years ago from out of state says in a note to the Democrat-Herald:

“I wonder why (recycling cans) is not made easier here in Oregon. Pushing one can at a time through a filthy hole in a machine at a grocery store while standing in sticky muck is so awful and time-consuming that I have a really hard time doing it. Why is that the only option? I have been recycling the cans and bottles for a very long time and wish to continue, but this system is awful.”

Her solution: “We should be able to take the cans and plastic bottles to a recycling site and have them weighed as is done in other states. The recycling sites are usually at grocery stores and easy to get to, and vastly easier to get the job done — just a few minutes.”

Redemption centers would solve the problem of having to wait while some other customer redeems six months’ worth of empties, one can and bottle at a time.

Last spring, the Northwest Grocery Association was considering an initiative in 2008, calling for such centers. Let us hope they follow through. (hh)

http://www.dhonline.com/articles/2007/08/28/news/opinion/6edi01_container.txt