This is what I saw when I opened the drop door at the Albany BottleDrop on Thursday evening.
Sometimes you need strong arms to return your beverage empties at the Albany BottleDrop, the only beverage container redemption center in town.
On Thursday evening, I hoped to drop off just one bag of plastic bottles. But as the photos show, the space behind the the door was already full, more than full. It was jammed tight. Nothing else would fit in there.
This was at about 7:40 p.m.
An employee of the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative, which runs BottleDrop redemption centers statewide, was just leaving. He saw me standing there.
“All this is since 6 o’clock,” he said, or words to that effect, by way of explanation,
The redemption center closes at 6.
The drop door is available until 10 p.m., but after 6, no one is there in the back room to clear away bags that are coming through the door.
The man also had advice: Place the bag near the top and push up.
Makes sense. Presumably the bags at the top of the heap are easier to push up and out of the way.
That worked, more or less. My bag of empties got part way in, enough to let the door swing shut. But it wasn’t ideal.
I’ve encountered this situation once or twice before when returning bags late in the evening, but never during the day when people are working in the BottleDrop’s back room.
Here’s a bit of common-sense Oregon consumer advice: If you’re using those BottleDrop bags to collect your empties, drop them off during the day. (hh)
The bag on the ground eventually made it inside, but it took some pushing.
They are also implementing a new policy July 1…can no longer bring blue of green bags inside to the front counter. They might want to rethink this, as the pile up is not just late in the evening; I have experienced this pile up in the early afternoons as well. In addition, the card reader doesn’t work 100% of the time on the outside drop door. The other day my card didn’t work…I also watched an elderly lady’s card not work; only to have 3 person’s card work. This has been a situation for several months now.
Seems like it would be easy for someone to come along and remove the owner tags with their own tags, and by doing so steal money.
That has exactly happened and been reported on in the past…employees being the culprits.
If the last employee out leaves 1:40 after closing, you’d think they would clear the bin before leaving the building? That’s just common sense.
Another thing that bothers me about the door is that you can’t be courteous and hold the door open for the next person. Apparently it tells the system that the second person didn’t return anything (since their card wasn’t read). I’ve been “passed over” in the past for someone being courteous. As an “older” person being courteous is just part of our nature.
I drink milk, water from the tap, and decaf, so I don’t have bottles to recycle. And, when I occasionally have one, I recycle it in my Republic Services recycling bin. Republic’s services cost each month, so why not use it. Not worth the gasoline, time and energy to go to the “sticky” Bottle Drop for a couple of bucks of refund.
Not returning the bottles or cans is exactly what bottlers and distributers hoped would happen when they agreed to this state scheme that is inconvenient to consumers. Guess who gets to keep the unclaimed deposits? The unclaimed deposit total is likely in the tens of millions of dollars annually on a statewide basis.
We don’t need to have Bottle Drop. We have recycling at our homes and businesses. Just stop the whole thing and expect people to recycle. It’s what almost every other state does and it works. The whole system sucks.
But how would people on Food Stamps be able to convert deposits to CASH?
Shortly after they raised the Deposit to a dime, one of the Eugene TV stations had a piece on “apparently homeless” guys buying bottled water, dumping it just outside the store to redeem the deposit.
I see this occurring nearly weekly behind Safeway in Corvallis. It’s an ecological and economical tragedy.
This is because the OBRC Corporation considers the green bag service at redemption center a “value added service” to which they fire back at you with “if you don’t like it, use the redemption center in person”.
It’s also worth noting that the Albany East Liquor Store 1103, 2530 Pacific Blvd SE is legally required to let you do in-person redemption of 144/day. Source:
https://www.oregon.gov/olcc/Docs/bottle_bill/RedemptionCenters.pdf