Bottle Drop Rant

[JuglansRegia]

So due to corona and lack of motivation to wait in line with stinky tweekers, my plastic berry water bottles from Trader Joe's really started to pile up here and take up shop space. Something had to be done. I keep hearing about these green bags and how fast and easy it is to drop off your bags without all the hassle. So I set up the account online and requested the card you need to get bags and labels, much to my horror, they don't mail it to you so you have to go pick it up. I wrote down the stupid code, and a few days later when I was driving by I swung by to get my bags/tags. I had to wait in line in that stinky place, and of course my code was no good or expired, which is fine because I didn't write down or bring my PIN anyways. So a week later I made a second attempt, this time successfully, I felt almost like I won the lottery.

So I get back to the shop and spend at least an hour emptying the normal sized trash bags full of bottles so I can stuff as many as I can into the green bags without crushing anything. I wasted at least an hour doing this. The next day I stuck on the labels, loaded up the Highlander with 15 green bags and made the 1.5 mile drive down the street to the bottle drop disaster. There was girl already at the little trap door trying to stuff in a green bag, the thing was jamb packed, she left with a couple green bags in her car. So I go inside and ask an employee if I can deposit my bags behind the counter since there drop off area is full. She said I would need to come back at a later time. I asked when is it normally not full, she said first thing in the morning. Great, so now I have a full car of green bags, even one in the passenger seat. The self drop closes at 10PM so I swung by at 9:30PM just in case the situation improved, nope. So this morning I drove over there at 9:30AM, it was already a zoo with a line of depressed looking people lined up half the length of the building. Pulled up to the self drop, there was another girl trying to shove in some bags of bottles, she got in two with great effort, but otherwise it was so tight you couldn't squeeze a booger in there. That was it, I had enough, I wasn't going to drive around with that crap for another minute, I wasn't going to unload then reload it to keep seeing if I could deposit a few bags at some point, maybe.

So in protest I dumped all the bags on the sidewalk next the building. Someone asked if they will take them like that I said I really don't give a F. I really hope it caused a tweeker riot with them fighting over $50 worth of plastic. Next time I'll put an add on facebook for 5cents a bottle, if that doesn't work I will throw the bottles in the trash, not the recycling bin. Rant over.

but out of curiosity, is the bottle drop disaster a state run organization?

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[CamoDeafie]

but out of curiosity, is the bottle drop disaster a state run organization?

It isnt. I think its a private cooperative.

OBRC - Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative

www.obrc.com

Edit. Heard some stores will take your green bags, like Safeway? May want to look into that

 

[Certaindeaf]

Tap water is pretty tasty round these parts, pard.

 

[frank linkh]

just huck em in the trash or give them away.....life is too short to f with that obrc CF

 

[Rickenbacher39]

Another first world problem claims another victim.................

 

[gmerkt]

I'm not familiar with the bottle deposit in Oregon. If you pay when you buy the beverage, shouldn't the retail store where you bought them pay out the deposit on return? That's how it used to work when we made a deposit on Coke/Pepsi/etc. soft drink bottles. Which were actually sent back to the bottling plants, cleaned and reused. Some beer bottles, too.

Or is the deposit just a sneaky kind of tax, where a low return rate is expected? If an inordinate amount of time is required for a relatively high investment in time involved, you gotta think about your time being worth something.

My experience with self-service donation bins (Goodwill, Salvation Army, Boy Scouts collecting newspaper, etc.) is that they are rarely serviced/emptied in a timely manner.

I don't know what kind of deposit you're talking about here, but if you save them up long enough to have many bags full, you've also got to think about the "cost" of storage space in your place. That cost may not be in money, but surely in inconvenience.

As to the recycling part. This idea makes people feel good. They're saving the world, prolonging valuable resources, it creates jobs, and so on. There is some truth to that. BUT: There are also some ugly facts. Not too long ago, the Chinese government decreed that their industries were no longer going to accept large amounts of recyclables from the US. That right there was a big hit on the recycling industry here. Lots of the crap we used to save and send overseas found itself without a market. Some of it that used to go to China started detouring through the recycling system but its actual destination was a landfill. Under these circumstances, it doesn't make economic sense to recycle as we have in the past. Industry is trying to adjust to this situation and find new ways of dealing with recyclables. It's an on-going process.

 

[CamoDeafie]

I'm not familiar with the bottle deposit in Oregon. If you pay when you buy the beverage, shouldn't the retail store where you bought them pay out the deposit on return? That's how it used to work when we made a deposit on Coke/Pepsi/etc. soft drink bottles. Which were actually sent back to the bottling plants, cleaned and reused. Some beer bottles, too.

Some stores indeed do have that, primarily in counties where there are no Bottle Drop Centers. However, some stores do work with Bottle Drop accounts and will take the green bags and update the Bottle Drop account (put money in that account); and you can cash out whenever you want at places that have Bottle Drop cash refund kiosks. Places with Bottle Drops have a daily limit of 350 I think, for $35 a day basically a $0.10 per bottle... while other places that do not have these accounts/kiosks limit customer returns to 144 a day ($14.40)

 

[gmerkt]

Some stores indeed do have that, primarily in counties where there are no Bottle Drop Centers. However, some stores do work with Bottle Drop accounts and will take the green bags and update the Bottle Drop account (put money in that account); and you can cash out whenever you want at places that have Bottle Drop cash refund kiosks. Places with Bottle Drops have a daily limit of 350 I think, for $35 a day basically a $0.10 per bottle... while other places that do not have these accounts/kiosks limit customer returns to 144 a day ($14.40)

That sounds like a lot of trouble to get your money back. So if you are a visitor and don't have a Bottle Drop account, you can't get your money back on onesies and twosies?

 

[CamoDeafie]

That sounds like a lot of trouble to get your money back. So if you are a visitor and don't have a Bottle Drop account, you can't get your money back on onesies and twosies?

It is a hassle

 

[Ura-Ki]

The bottle drops are run by a company called Container Recovery, out of Northwest Portland, they drop in on each of these container collection sights and load up the crushed blocks of aluminum in one trip, and the plastics and glass in others! The glass goes mostly to North Portland on I 205, the plastics I don't know where, but close to PDX! The aluminum gets loaded in rail cars and shipped to Hood River where it gets melted down into ingots and then shipped all over!

 

[Cavedweller]

I'm not familiar with the bottle deposit in Oregon. If you pay when you buy the beverage, shouldn't the retail store where you bought them pay out the deposit on return?

The state granted a recycling monopoly to a private coop. Where they have bottle drop centers, you must take your cans and bottles there to get your refund. This means everyone in Salem must drive to 1 of 3 centers in town. The extra driving is good for the environment.

You don't need an account to get a refund. You can walk in and drop your stuff in the machines and get your cash. The problem recently has been that they have shut down half the machines to maintain social distance, and lines have been long. More people have shifted to the green bag system lately to avoid the lines, but the increased volume has clogged that system, too.

Getting your money back is a hassle. But the company's promotional literature tells you how much more convenient the present system is compared to the old way.

 

[JuglansRegia]

Well, each one probably has a lot of BTU's maybe I'll try mixing them with wood and burning them in the Arrow woodstove I have, hit two birds with one stone.

 

[Hawaiian]

We used to fill up two large lawn bags and my son would redeem them and got around $30.00. Heck, that is a case of beer. We stopped because of Covid and the possible exposure at the redemption place. My wife recently donated them somewhere, but I don't remember where. Maybe search online for a worthy charity in your area that could use them.

 

[gmerkt]

The problem recently has been that they have shut down half the machines to maintain social distance, and lines have been long.

Rhetorical questions, how does shutting down half the machines and causing longer lines at the remaining ones help the Covid thing?? Fred Meyer has opened more checkout lines in their stores, seems like that's a better way to go.

 

[Mikej]

Chortle...Seriously smart guys that build their own gun from piles of parts. And reload their own ammunition...Have a problem with looking on the internet and finding myriad places to take their green bags with stickers and drop them off to get the dime each placed into an account where its accessible at even more places for redemption. For instance, our Bi-Mart at 122nd and Halsey has a point of access that allows you to access your account to get a ticket and cash it at that store, but don't have a drop site.

And if you were to access the secret web site, Shhh, don't tell anyone.... BottleDrop: Oregon's Bottle & Can Return program ...you could easily look up where you can get bags, and how much they cost. You can look up a buncha' stores that have drop offs. AND, you can even get an EXTRA 20% using a "Chit" printed in some stores to buy items in that store. Frinstance, Fred Meyer. Shop, add up your items, say $24.00, go to the machine and get a chit for this purchase using $20.00 of your bottle drop money and the chit will pay for the $24.00 purchase. There are some limitations in that you can only access a maximum of $99.00 at a time. But that's lined out in that secret web site.

Things are kind of messed up now because of, well, what's messing everything up. The big redemption centers are a mess because all the stores have closed off their bottle areas. And the drop boxes at those stores fill up fast because they aren't large bins, and a bunch of the "Canners", that are able, have got the Bottle Drop accounts.

Try out that site. I was against this "Bottle Drop" crap when it first came out. I was eventually forced to do it because of the terrible machines and the disgusting mess around them.

 

[Oregonhunter5]

I'm aware I'm a very green fello. I've dumped oil in the gravel. Dumped gas on everything. Spray weeds with turbo kill. Burn crap like rubber, plastics, foam, etc. I don't litter though.
So it goes without saying I'd check myself into the nut house if I ever did what you tried to do.
Back in the "day", I worked at Safeway. Amongst many duties I counted cans And bottles. Well that was one nasty job. Old
Booze. Chew spit. Crap like that. I remember paying out hundreds of dollars to some dudes bringing in 15 bags of cans and bottles.
Smelly job.
But it was work. And it paid.

 

[JuglansRegia]

I tried, I am over it now, will never set foot on bottle drop property again. Time is money and I have already wasted more time on the crap than it was worth. A man has got to know his limitations and when to quit.

 

[SquirrelSlayer]

Do your local Scout troops or Churches accept donations? Might even be able to write it off!

 

[JuglansRegia]

Do your local Scout troops or Churches accept donations? Might even be able to write it off!

Probably, but will need to pick it up. I already have another bag started.

 

[Jooky111]

I buy like 3 bottles a year. how much sugar water you drinking. yuk