Here in Oregon we have a bottle bill which basically means that on certain items, such as soda pop and beer you pay an extra 5 cents per can or bottle and then you can get that money back when you return the bottles and cans to a store. Years ago they use to have bottle count boys at different grocery stores. They might have had bottle count girls, but I never encountered one. You would enter the store with your bag or cart filled with items to return for deposit, approach a cashier and try to make eye contact with them, and then wait for the cashier to pick up their black handled phone and say, “Bottle count on check stand 11”. I was always faithful to this system, dutifully bagging up our returnable containers and walking to the store with them. Then they put in a new system on the outside of most stores. This bottle center is a do it yourself feature where you feed the bottles into a machine and when you’re done a receipt with the amount you’re due spits out. There is a name across the top of this place, but I can’t remember it. Maybe it the “Do It your Fucking Self Bottle Center”, I don’t know. When they first put these in I continued to take my bottles to the store. The majority of the people using these machines in line before me were homeless people living their lives off of the Oregon bottle bill. To them, the “Do It your Fucking Self Bottle Center” was like the bar Cheers, a place to gather where everyone knows your name. They would laugh and talk and swig beer, pass cigarette butts they had picked up off the ground back and forth, and angrily press the help button when one of the machines would malfunction, which it always did. As I stood there waiting for my turn I could smell the booze and urine emanating from their bodies, an all too common eau de cologne of poverty, homelessness and alcoholism. When we moved to our current house almost three years ago I was working fulltime and the nearest grocery store was further away. I gave up on the bottle returns, choosing instead to just place the bottles and cans with my other recyclables and put them out on the curb instead of walking and waiting an hour to get $1.20. Time is money too, I told myself, but in reality I just didn’t want to deal with the depressing task of the “Do It your Fucking Self Bottle Center”.
What I didn’t realize was where the people I witnessed at said center were getting their bottles and cans. They come by my house several times a week now and dig through my recycling bins looking to make 5 or 10 cents. We don’t drink a lot of pop or beer here, but it never stops them from coming, some on foot, some on bicycles, some pushing shopping carts and some with the dexterity to ride a bike while pulling a shopping cart. Some of these people are respectful and leave my recyclables as neatly sorted as they were when I put them out; others fling paper around, spill cans in the street and break glass. One more than one occasion I have seen someone in front of my house taking an empty bottle of vodka, or scotch or whatever we have and removing it from the bin raising it to their lips while their greedy tongues try in vain to get one last drop from the bottle. At these times I feel a sense of revulsion and sadness dueling inside of me. There must be a better way, an answer to the frighteningly large homeless population here, but I have more questions than answers.
“There but for the grace of God goes I” has entered my head more than once, and I’m not even a believer.
Comment by Carl Strohmeyer
November 14, 2006 @ 5:44 pm
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.
Oregon either needs a system like California or pure free enterprise, and to stop the arrogance of Oregon leaders such as Gordon Anderson who cannot see past all the problems we have with this dirty, wretched, anti free enterprise system here in Oregon
When I was trying to raise extra money in LA collecting cans, paper, bottles, ect, businesses appreciated it asked me where I had been on the early mornings that I did not do this.
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.
Comment by Sarah
November 15, 2006 @ 1:45 am
Here in Massachusetts we have a Bottle Bill as well. We also used to have bottle boys, at the local package store, that would count up your bottles and give you the cash. I used to return A LOT of bottles all at once, so much so that when they replaced the bottle boys with bottle machines, I stopped going, because I’d be there all day.
In the town I grew up in, there’s a man we affectionately call the Can Man. He even calls himself that, as it’s painted on the side of the golf cart he drives around town in. He exists solely on the revenue he gets from bottles and cans he finds in trash cans and on the ground. He drives around in the golf cart all day looking for them.
Comment by Plain Jane
November 17, 2006 @ 8:33 am
Can you put the bottles in a separate container marked “Bottles” or “Hobos” or whatever so that they don’t scatter them all over? I mean, I know it just encourages them, but anything that will keep the peace and keep your trash from being scattered all over might be worth it.
Comment by admin
November 17, 2006 @ 10:31 am
Thanks for sharing your viewpoint, Carl. I agree that changes must be made here in Oregon. The current system isn’t working.
Comment by admin
November 17, 2006 @ 10:32 am
Sarah,
Your can man sounds endearing. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the golf cart.
Thanks for your comment.
Comment by admin
November 17, 2006 @ 10:36 am
Jane, I’ve tried that. Except I didn’t mark it hobos. They still dig through my recycling, because they are convinced there’s something at the very bottom of the bin that might be worth five cents. It’s infuriating.