Oregon has one of the best deals in the U.S. for recycling bottles and cans. And the group in charge of the state’s recycling program wants to ensure that people living near a town on the Oregon border aren’t abusing the system.
The Argus Observer in Ontario, Canada, recently reported that one of the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative’s sites in a small town in Eastern Oregon gave out cards explaining why they might not accept a customer’s recycling.
The company runs a chain of recycling centers called BottleDrop. According to spokesman Eric Chambers, recycling usually increases in the spring when the weather improves.
Chambers said that the cooperative’s policy isn’t new, but workers can check a car’s license plate or ask for an ID card to find out where a can or bottle came from. A person from Idaho could still bring their recycling to Ontario, but they would need to show a ticket or proof that they bought the container in Oregon.
“We can’t have Oregonians paying out refunds for containers that didn’t have a deposit paid,” he said. “The Bottle Bill lets us throw away bottles that we can probably guess weren’t returned in Oregon.”
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Oregon’s recycling program came from the state’s Bottle Bill, passed in 1971. The goal of the law was to get rid of bottles and cans on the state’s beaches and roadsides by letting Oregonians repay the deposit they pay when they buy a reusable container.
Since then, the rule has been shown to work well and be well-liked. According to the cooperative’s figures, almost 90% of recyclable bottles and cans were redeemed last year, much more than the national rate of 35%. The Bottle Bill was so popular that the recycling deposit was raised from 5 cents to 10 cents in 2017.
Because of its close relationship with Idaho, Ontario is unique because of the state’s innovative bottle redemption system. Malheur County is the only county in Oregon that is in the Mountain Time Zone, and Ontario is much closer to Boise than it is to Portland or Salem.
Even though Ontario and Malheur County have been border towns for a long time, their roles have become more important as political differences between Idaho and Oregon have grown. There is so much traffic from Idaho, where cannabis is still illegal, to Ontario’s large cannabis market that city leaders have spent the last few sessions pushing for a bill to let the city tax weed at a higher rate.
A recent update by Oregon BottleDrop via tweet, which Is given beow-
https://twitter.com/ORBottleDrop/status/1651624289916043265
Even though Planned Parenthood said it also wanted to help people in Eastern Oregon, it opened an abortion clinic in Ontario soon after Idaho banned the practice.
In the world of recycling fraud, where the stakes aren’t as high, the bottle group keeps an eye on more than just Idaho. Oregon is one of the few places in the West that lets people get money back for recycling, which means that Washington doesn’t have the same program. Chambers said the cooperative takes the same steps for BottleDrops near Washington, like those in Portland or Hermiston.
Chambers said that nearby states passing similar bottle bills would be the easiest way for Oregon to stop recycling fraud. Only California, one of Oregon’s neighbors, has a redemption scheme.
“Parallel policy would help make sure that people in Idaho and Washington have good ways to redeem their points right in their states,” he said. “The parallel policy would be the best thing for the earth and how the deposit return systems work.”
Source- Oregon Public Broadcasting Department