Oregonians cash in on bigger refund for bottles, cans

PORTLAND, Ore. People in Oregon lined up to turn in their used soda cans and glass bottles Saturday, the first day of a new refund that doubled the amount they could get to 10 cents per can.

Oregon was the first state to give 5-cent refunds for recycling used soda cans and glass bottles more than 45 years ago.

Now with other recycling options commonplace, the state is working to revamp the program by doubling that refund on bottled and canned water, soda, beer and malt beverages — regardless of what their labels say.

Oregon’s 1971 Bottle Bill has been replicated in nine other states and the U.S. territory of Guam. Michigan is the only other state with an across-theboard payout as high as 10 cents per bottle, although liquor and other large bottles carry a 10-cent payout in California and 15 cents in Maine and Vermont.

Oregonians cashed in slightly more than 1 billion bottles and cans in 2015, roughly two-thirds of total sales that year, according to a 2017 report to the Legislature by the state Liquor and Control Commission, which aids distributors in administering program operations.

That equates to almost $30 million in gross bottle refunds that Oregonians never redeemed, all of which stayed with local and national beverage distributors such as Pepsi and Pendleton Bottle Co.

Some of those funds help beverage distributors operate the program. It involves transporting recyclables to processing sites and reimbursing grocery stores, which don’t make a profit but are still required to accept empty containers and refund consumers.