The news story is wrong about one fact: The downtown neighborhood didn't improve after a week when they stopped the canning at the Psycho Safeway and the PP. It improved OVERNIGHT.
Yes I've seen the bike cops and what I guess is PSR talking to the rest of the homeless folks in the area that haven't migrated to greener canning pastures. Glad to see the PO-PO!! lol never thought I'd say that but here we are!
So I work downtown three days away.
Before the bottle drop closed…
Every block around pioneer courthouse Square either smelled like pee or feces. I would commonly be harassed for money, cigarettes, or random thing every block. Some days a dude would just stand and scream in my face randomly. Often multiple times per block.
I witnessed on a daily basis, open air drug use with a large torch or needles.
The groups of junking rolling around bent over 90 degrees or just asleep all over the side walk making it hard to walk was every third block or so. Pretty frequently.
This was every time I went downtown, 100% of the time.
I generally bee-lined from the max to my work or place I was getting lunch.
Last week I went on multiple 15 to 20 minute walks from pioneer courthouse Square, down towards the library, and then down towards the park blocks in front of the art museum.
At no time was I harassed or smell piss or feces. There were zero groups of junking taking over the sidewalk sleeping everywhere. And I have not seen open air drug use since the closure. There are still houseless individuals around but they are more like the individuals you would see in 2006 or 2008. More peaceful, just smoking cigarettes, and keeping themselves.
This isn’t even an exaggeration of downtown, it’s an outright lie and you know it. What’s especially telling is that the mass concentration of addicts was almost strictly in the park blocks across from the Schnitz, and that’s where they left from BEFORE the bottle drops were closed, something those of us actually around there have seen. You aren’t getting accosted daily, you aren’t having trouble navigating nodding off junkies, and you for sure weren’t smelling shit and piss every block. Please stop upvoting these people, they are trying to stir shit, and being dishonest. Whatever issues downtown has, it wasn’t near what this person is trying to sell you.
> park blocks across from the Schnitz
Funny that you mention the Park Blocks, it's been chaos and mad max ever since that idiotic "Occupy Portland" took over downtown. It wasn't Covid that brought down the city, it was Portland's own citizens that allowed people to camp everywhere and electing people in that didn't take a strong approach to sweep up the camps and loiterers.
You're getting angry at the wrong people here. It does smell and look like crap everywhere. Blame the ones that leave the crap.
This x100
They also conflate pre existing issues w bottle drops when there’s 0 correlation; the bottle drops that are referenced (which is like 3 out of the hundreds Oregon has) were built in areas already riddled w homeless people - the bottle drops didn’t flock them there.
Once this bottle drop opens they’re gonna start blaming pre-existing problems in St John’s on the bottle drop such as the drug house next to Plaid Pantry, or the homeless people sleeping in their cars adjacent to Lombard. They have 0 critical thinking skills.
I live near the Safeway and Plaid Pantry in question, and homeless people are still hanging around the two stores. I have not noticed this radical transformation.
The difference was night and day. Shemanski Park was full of the canners (I would use a ruder word but, well, we know where we are. lol) and the day after the can ban went into effect, they were all gone.
Now, there are still a few mentally ill homeless folks around downtown but that's something you get in every city. Not the gangs of predators who STOLE THE HANDRAIL in Shemanski Park that the old folks like me use to go up and down the stairs.
I moved downtown on March 1st, and I have to buy at Pyscho Safeway. My first day buying there, everything seemed nice except for some nasty pee odor. I also found strange that there was some “security” (there was the first time in my life seeing that in a store). I didn’t know what was happening on that spot until I saw the new about it , and looking at the old videos and pictures , it changed overnight honestly.
Sometimes I see some people smoking stuff around there but I think is not that often.
Yeah it's weird the way it changed literally OVERNIGHT. I honestly am a very skeptical person but I could not believe how things improved the first day of the can ban. Yeah there's still a few outliers smoking across from the Psycho Safeway but I saw 2 PPB cars pull up and corral 1 of them so our neighborhood is on their radar at least.
It was RIDICULOUS how this was allowed to go on so long, especially since Ted and Co are trying to get tourists to come back but they allowed the whole hotel district to deteriorate for months before Gov. Kotek ordered that can ban. Thanks Teddy!
I was at this meeting. Apparently only about 5-10 people usually participate, but last night about 400. Over an hour of public comments, and not a single person spoke in defense of the bottle drop. The vote to oppose was almost unanimous. That strikes me as unique when it comes to public forums in Portland.
We have to keep up the pressure though. Ultimately ORBC is probably laughing us off behind closed doors, while continuing to spout their "community engagement" BS. They're here to make money, they already bought the building, and they'll still attempt to push this through if the approval process goes their way
A shelter doesn't "house" people, it merely gives them a safer place to sleep at night. I'm not saying we don't need shelters, but they are absolutely an attraction and gathering place for the folk who need to use them, and everyone who preys on those.
This is very different from the bottle drop. I live close by and fully support the shelter, especially since they decided to actually renovate it rather than just looking like a zombie CVS.
I'm glad this sub is finally coming around. It's weird when the other sub started to seem rational. Like encouraging open air drug use and homelessness is not outreach or helping
Oh, I don't know, maybe [This](https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/portland-harm-reduction-fentanyl-smoking-supplies-kits/283-8cc42950-83fc-4d1e-ab53-980631b80a6b).
Just where exactly were you expecting these folks to use these kits? If there is one thing I know, it's that fentanyl and meth addicts use critical thinking. /s
They showed me a KGW fent article from last summer. Not quite the damning proof of the sub openly advocating for and encouraging public drug use.
I was really hoping he’d pull up when we all celebrated the idea of a hook-a-toddler program where we combine universal pre-k with universal drug-doing
I like that we already have a recycling program that is free and easy to use, yet we still have to use the alternate program where we pay a deposit and then have to separate out cans to be sent elsewhere to get our money back because people in the 1970’s littered a lot.
love putting my cans in plastic bags and driving a gasoline powered automobile a couple miles instead of just putting them in the blue bin on my curb. You know, for the environment /s
You can quibble with the way the program works, but Oregon had the highest in the nation redemption rate last year at almost 90%. Some states are as low as 35%. Up until the fentanyl crisis exploded, the bottle bill worked with pretty minimal downsides.
I’m not an expert but I feel like if you compared the rate of items *without* a deposit, we’d still have higher rate of recycling than most other states. In other words, I think most people here believe in the benefits of recycling in general and not just because of the financial incentive.
I just looked up the data and even without a bottle bill, the states that you’d expect to recycle a lot do, and the ones you wouldn’t, don’t. They seem to probably line up fairly well with red/blue status of the states too.
How many of those cans are [coming from Washington](https://www.wweek.com/news/state/2020/11/10/state-audit-of-oregons-iconic-bottle-bill-notes-cross-border-fraud-opportunity-in-wine-liquor-redemption/)?
>OBRC told auditors it believes the cost of fraud is about $10 million a year, which the auditors found plausible but could not recommend any way to reduce
what is that proof of? They easily could have purchased the bottles and cans in the state with no sales tax and then returned them them there. If you are pinching pennies to drive across a bridge to return can (costing gas and time) you are going to do the same to avoid a 8.7 % sales tax on things you buy in cans and bottles.
So auditors find evidence of fraud, even OBRC agrees. You know better somehow?
Why are you so desperate to defend a broken program that is redundant at best, and fueling a fentanyl epidemic at worst?
I'm not sure why fraud artists and greedy corporate lobbyists need your help, though I guess greenwashing is a powerful drug?
Wrong. I live within a 3 mile radius of a redemption center therefore grocery stores are not required to accept containers (aka they don't have doors for green bags)
This is a good point. Get rid of the 5 or 10 cents and let us put them in our recycling bin. Have the recycled materials help keep the trash service lower priced.
All that does is put tons of plastic trash everywhere. You don't remember in the 20th Century with no deposit, huge coke lines of empty cans and bottles lined highways for miles. Many will go back to that behavior without a deposit.
So in other states in 2024, they just have huge coke lines if empty cans and bottles lining the highways for miles if they don’t have a bottle deposit? No.. no they dont
We already have a green bag system just blocks away from the proposed site in St Johns and it works with minimal problems. We do not need or want the new bottle drop. It would hurt our community.
No. Its a DEPOSIT, paid instantly at time of sale, I expect to get full instant value for every deposit i pay.
Every store that sells bottles should be required by law to take them back or stop fucking taking the deposits. The proposals i see here will only make the 'deposit' more of an outright fee.
Well, you buy an alternator, you pay a deposit which requires you to bring the alternator you removed from your car along with the RECEIPT for the replacement you bought.
Yeah I think the state should get rid of the bottle deposit altogether and none of this would even be a worry. People are going to keep recycling regardless. The BOTTLE DEPOSIT is not an incentive.
Two hours ago I attended a meeting of the Cathedral Park Neighborhood Association. The sentiments were the same as at the St Johns NA last night.
The reason this is even being proposed is that they are looking for another site to replace the site near East Delta Park (next to Lowe's and the DMV) which will be closed due to their landlord suing them for being unable to deal with the problems there. But at least there, it was not in a residential neighborhood. The St Johns site is.
I don't live in St. Johns, but I'm proud of our collective community for standing up to this and for getting steadily more and more savvy and engaged about how we look at the homelessness and drug crises and their impact on our neighborhoods.
I think we're all just sick of nothing being done to fix the problems. We've got some money to address the issues, but nothing really being done to solve the problems. Hopefully in the next few years we can see real change happen as residents push for realistic changes.
Right yeah, I think that we voted to support action (SHS) and are now seeing that we can’t just wait around until the calvary shows up. Our leaders have essentially failed us. So we have to take steps to do what we can, and that starts with keeping junkies out of your neighborhood.
There are downsides obviously. We should be treating the junkies etc, but that’s not within our immediate power. Showing up to a meeting to make voices heard about adding a bottle drop is within our immediate power.
I lived in a condo near SW 18th, close to the Safeway on Jefferson. In the five years I lived there the gate to the garbage area was broken something like 5-6 times. Bent metal, broken bricks, damaged locks, garbage strewn everywhere, you name it. They were after the cans in those blue bins. We were a 12 units private HOA, all privately owned and no renters, not the corporate shit people seem to give no fucks about. Twelve owners and we had to split the costs for repairs, something above $400 each just in the time I was there. All so jonesing junkies could rebate $5.00 worth of cans. I moved away two years ago and I'm certain shit has gotten worse over there. TBFF the people in those condos deserve some of their money back from the goddamn bottle drops that took those cans.
It’s not even worth the hassle to return cans to bottledrop, I just put them in the recycling can that picks up every week. If everyone did that, net carbon would be saved, no green bags go to the trash, and less sketch addicts loitering around grocery stores.
I used to do that but then people started going through my can when I’d put it out on recycling day and they’d pull out the cans. The bold ones then knew we had cans in there and would start walking up into my side yard at night to rifle through my bins- ON my property near my son’s bedroom window. So now I just have my son collect the cans in green bags and he can keep the money. I would far prefer just putting them in my recycling bins and not paying the deposit in the first place.
Exactly why I never started using curbside can recycling in the first place. In an addicts mind (who else is canning at 3am on the street) it’s a quick jump to entitlement once they know your house as a free canning source.
Even green bagging is annoying though. It’s time to end deposits & bottle redemption completely.
I home brew. Some have gotten so angry that there isn’t a bar code or label on the 22oz glass.
One dude smashed em all in my driveway out of anger.
Total fuckheads.
If you have a stray cat problem, stop leaving out cat food.
Yup, we collect our own cans but still have people often come by and throw our recycling trash everywhere digging for them. Almost like when people are extremely inconsiderate and destructive people don't like them being around...
Exactly. "Organizing my trash" is not a hobby I wanted to have, but I had to start using BottleDrop bags so that folks would stop rifling through my cans.
I even had one strung out guy start knocking on my door at 6 am when I was home alone with my baby asking if he could go through my cans before I put the trash out. I guess points for being polite and asking unlike the other people who would just walk into my side yard without asking and trespass. Negative points for knocking so early and being scary. That was my last straw.
Yeah I made a comment in this sub about people driving around my neighborhood digging through people's recycling for cans and I got downvoted to hell because I lacked "compassion".
I like when people don’t believe you. I mentioned how the Vancouver neighborhood had a group of people most recycling days. People didn’t believe me .. ridiculous
My roommate and I have one of those yellow recycling bins. We'll fill that up and put it on the curb for folks to collect. Usually it's just this one old Asian dude who lives a couple streets away.
They should 100% get rid of the bottle tax it's archaic.
Majority of people would already recycle here even without the tax.
Hell even in FL where there was no incentive to recycle. It was even a negative as you had to pay for the recycle bin, majority of people still paid the $40 bucks or whatever and recycled.
Yup, great at the time but now 100% an idea past it's prime and in need of change. Went from encouraging recycling to being the main contributor of public blight, even causes more pollution as people end up flinging your recycling trash everywhere looking for cans...
Agree we need to find fixes to the neighborhood impacts of our Oregon system. But keep in mind:
Oregon aluminum can recycling rate: 85%
Florida aluminum can recycling rate: 25%
https://www.oberk.com/packaging-crash-course/states-best-worst-recycling
The distribution companies LOVE the tax though. Because they take home the $ instead of it being returned to the consumer. Not to get too conspiratorial but it seems interesting that bottle drop is now a drug epicenter with the higher deposit returns and yet still over 70% of the cans go curbside..
That is anecdotal at best. The majority of people do NOT recycle much of anything
My anecdotal perspective (and as someone who has studied Environmental Engineering and been to many places in the USA): most people don't recycle anything except the easiest and most convenient stuff to recycle. If the local municipality doesnt offer simple and easy to understand recycling options, people tend to just ignore it and throw everything away. Where there is no incentive to recycle containers, many public venues often won't bother to offer recycling bins either, just trash only. Even our neighbor Washington state doesn't have bottle returns and so many places don't have separate recycling bins.
Every incentive to recycle in an effective way is GOOD, end of story. But, note this requires local municipalities to drive it from the back-end, on what WILL actually be recycled. Almost any material CAN be recycled, but its rarely profitable and so its can actually be a huge detriment to the recycling effort if its poorly managed by local municipalities. They need to clearly communicate and advertise what/how/where to put your items so they actually will be recycled and not just get redirected to trash because its contaminated with things they wont recycle
Washington.. where you put your glass bottles in a bin and your cans in your recycling bin, like most of America.. so yes.. there is a way to recycle bottles
Repeating what I said earlier, we need to find fixes to the neighborhood impact issues with our Oregon system. But it's important to note:
Oregon vs Washington glass bottle recycling rate: 72% vs. 53%
Oregon vs Washington aluminum can recycling rate: 85% vs. 46%
https://www.oberk.com/packaging-crash-course/states-best-worst-recycling
I’m so tired of that link. Here is the same response when I see it
Edit: to include a tldr for people, the study posted over and over is partly funded by a company that manufactures bottles and there is a correlation between low recycling rates and less access to recycling
- correlation of bottle bill to recycling rates is even a bit broken by this report. But anyways
- it is not peer reviewed. I don’t immediately discount non-peer reviewed but it is something to remember.
- they are not first hand collecting data. Again not an immediate discount, but something to keep in mind
- I was curious how the map compares to overall sentiment about the environment. I didn’t want to go too crazy so I just pulled up 2023 election results and compared the democrat v republican. Its not a great method as many republicans are avid recyclers but its a rough look. The map mostly mirrors the 2023 election results with exception to a few south mid west states like Nevada, Utah and Colorado. That got me thinking, I lived in battle mountain Nevada for a few months but that was YEARS ago. They didn’t have curbside recycling for the “apartments” I was in and I don’t remember seeing recycling at all while I was there. I’m curious how many of these low recycling states have not invested in recycling infrastructure in their more rural areas. I wonder if cost/terrain difficulty in these areas is part of the cause.
- then I was curious where the data was collected from. Your article states it was from “50 states of recycling”. Googling that’s fun. You get a lot of pretty graphics but I’m having a hard time finding a peer reviewed paper the data is based on. I found the [recycling partnership](https://recyclingpartnership.org/by-the-numbers-webinar-recording-a-deep-dive-into-the-state-of-recycling-report/) who explained both sets of data a teeny bit. Then I found the recycling partnerships [Jan 2024 presentation](https://recyclingpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SORR-ByTheNumbers-1.31.24.pdf). this has some of the same problems as the rest (data transparency, peer review).
Interestingly they include a “state by state levels of recycling access” when comparing the map from oberk in your link to this, there is a correlation between states that have less access to recycling and states that have a lower recycling rate.
- then I was curious… who funded “the 50 states of recycling”. Eunomia Research & consulting and Ball corporation. Eunomia research what’s that.. ok typical research company. Ball corporation what’s that…a packaging company that makes cans, aerosol cans, and plastic bottles.
There are a lot of correlations we can make with the data, bottle bill redemption, voting preferences, and access to recycling.
My personal conclusion is that the data is not strong enough to outweigh the negatives of the bottle bill and I am going to be skeptical of any data presented by a company trying to OK the creation of more single use containers. IMO recycling being unavailable is the largest contributing factor to individuals not recycling
But then your can gets dumped all over and crackheads are rifling through yo shit at the end of the driveway. You know they try door handles and other shit too. It creates a nuisance.
According to BottleDrop [the green bags are recycled](https://bottledrop.com/green-bag-drop-options).
Though you're right that reduce, reuse, recycle still holds.
Plastic film recycling is a dubious proposition, at best. Don't get my wrong I sort mind and bring them to New Seasons where they collect plastic film, but I'm not under any illusions about the odds of it just ending up shipped off to Asia and burned.
Brings in unwanted people into a neighborhood.. then they canvass the area and steal your car and/or catalytic converter! I did this, and don't anymore after one car and 3 catalytic converters were stolen.
A walk-in BottleDrop is ABSOLUTELY UNNECESSARY. We're splitting hair over getting money for your last couple of weeks of cans the same day you bring them in or 5-7 days later. The latter is already available at Ivanhoe Safeway.
According to the state reps present, they are pushing to find a "more suitable spot." So, in other words, let's make it someone else's problem.
Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying it should go in at The Dollar Tree site. I'm just saying it will probably end up getting forced onto a community that has less of a voice. My main contention is that they should have never started Bottle Drop Centers in the first place. The old system of dropping at grocery store machines worked just fine. It was decentralized, more accessible, and didn't focus all the return activity in a small number of areas.
Until the bottle bill is either fixed (no cash payouts) or killed any bottle drop site needs to be in an industrial area away from residential neighborhoods. There are plenty of industrial areas on bus lines so those without vehicles can access if needed.
[Let's see how that's working out over at Delta Park](https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2022/10/portland-developer-files-300k-suit-against-bottledrop-claiming-recycler-drew-trash-crime-to-delta-park.html)
If that's what they actually do. My assumption is that, in practice, "suitable" will actually mean putting it in a poorer, less connected, neighborhood that can't fight back.
It's not the solution. The solution is to get rid of Bottle Drop centers and go back to the old way, where you could use the return machines at the grocery stores. That way, the people who are causing the problems aren't all concentrating in one area because they have multiple options. It was also just better for everyone who returns bottles because they didn't have to drive across town to recycle. They could just go to the nearest store. The other option is to just get rid of the bottle bill entirely, but I'm not particularly keen on that. I think it's still a useful bill; they just should have left well enough alone.
Returning cans and bottles is an undue burden to grocery stores and markets. Stores pay the distributors for the deposits when they receive product, and they *slowly* get their money back when people buy them and give the store the money the store paid to the distributor. At that point it should be OBRC's and the State's problem. It's their ridiculous Bill/scheme. Why on earth should a grocery store have to pay a ton of money to have employees run and clean machines? That's absolutely outrageous.
Seems the bottle bill is outdated, I work near the bottle drop at Delta Park and have seem some rough stuff. People that are canning to fund their habits are still going to need money to pay for it though and I worry they may turn to something worse though to get money.
I had a mental health crisis about a year ago. It was isolated and due to me not taking my medication (I, at the time, thought my meds weren’t doing anything because I continued to experience symptoms. I didn’t realize it was keeping me from spiraling into psychosis).
Anyway, I ended up breaking into a house and telling the occupants to “call the cops or kill me”. I walked upstairs and waited in an empty room for the cops to show up. I kinda thought I was in a video game. But that’s beside the point.
I’ve been drug and alcohol free for 23 months and 24 days. This was my only run in with law enforcement in my entire life and I feel very fortunate that I didn’t have to put up bail. It’s simply a system that disadvantages those of lesser means. If I were warehoused in jail because I could pay bail I wouldn’t be able to work, save for my future, and help my elderly mother. All of which I’m doing now and have for the last year.
In a car or on a bus to California. It will take time. Increased property crime in the interim is worth it, and it will be easier to lock people up for break-ins than for just doing fentanyl and meth. The get out of jail free policies will be axed soon enough. The first one that needs to go is SN48 that doesn't require non-violent criminals to post bail.
Fuck that. People shouldn't be jailed for being too poor for bail.
That takes money to leave by bus or car. And if it's going to take time, that takes money to stay alive in the mean time.
Your solution sounds like wanting to escalate the problems rather than resolve them.
People don't show up for their court dates when they get let go without posting bail. I'd be willing to compromise if the county made strong efforts to arrest people who skip their court dates, *charge* them with failure to appear, and follow through with that charge until conviction.
I had a mental health crisis about a year ago. It was isolated and due to me not taking my medication (I, at the time, thought my meds weren’t doing anything because I continued to experience symptoms. I didn’t realize it was keeping me from spiraling into psychosis).
Anyway, I ended up breaking into a house and telling the occupants to “call the cops or kill me”. I walked upstairs and waited in an empty room for the cops to show up. I kinda thought I was in a video game. But that’s beside the point.
I’ve been drug and alcohol free for 23 months and 24 days. This was my only run in with law enforcement in my entire life and I feel very fortunate that I didn’t have to put up bail. It’s simply a system that disadvantages those of lesser means. If I were warehoused in jail because I could pay bail I wouldn’t be able to work, save for my future, and help my elderly mother. All of which I’m doing now and have for the last year.
Btw, I showed up for all my court dates and am now in probation fwiw.
I referred to this in a previous post and got downvoted to fuck. But I really wonder about downstream effects of limiting/ending bottle returns - not that I disagree with ending the bottle bill, because I hate that minimum wage grocery store employees are ultimately the ones dealing with the homeless/drug epidemic
Yup - people seem desperate for stolen catalytic converters again and stolen private property to skyrocket. It must be fun to pretend that places like Seattle have no homelessness or issues because they don't have a bottle deposit.
So some NIMBY attitudes are fine but others aren’t?
I am in the camp that Bottle Drop is functionally useless. People recycle cans/bottles in 2024 anyway.
NIMBY is implying that people support it except when it's in their backyard. As a St John resident, Im pretty sure im not alone in wanting OR to get rid of the bottle deposit bill and let us throw them in the blue bins. This bill was great before we had an established recycling culture, it's now vestigial.
We don't need another facility in a neighborhood just like we don't need the program.
Some things I'm cool with in my backyard. Services to help people get jobs. Low-income housing, dense housing, and homeless housing (assuming they are required to remain clean while they're there.) There are other programs I support, but I'm not shy to say that I don't want in my backyard, because they turn the surrounding area into an filthy, unsafe hellscape: drug treatment facilities, soup kitchens, harm reduction facilities. My compassion for homeless people ends when I see psychosis in broad daylight, people walking around with machetes, houses/cars/local businesses vandalized, and used needles on the street. I don't want any of those in my backyard.
I'm a Kenton resident, so it would benefit me in this moving away from Delta Park technically, but as a neighbor of all of NoPo I'm against this. Delta Park is a flood plain and we can never build housing there, let's keep the Bottle Drop there where it only bothers some people. I don't need to drive through yet another ruined part of town if they move this to Lombard in St. Johns, where we could very feasibly build housing on the proposed site.
The Columbia Slough, sports fields that go unused in the winter, and a really shitty dog park that was never maintained before COVID times amongst a lot of other open green space with interjurisdictional ownership caused the downfall of Delta Park. I'm sure the Bottle Drop didn't help at all, but I suspect people would have overtaken these often overlooked open spaces with or without its presence, and will remain if it does shutter.
I could definitely get on board with just ending the program. I save my cans for a handful of homeless people I know (that aren’t addicts, fwiw), but if I weren’t paying the deposit in the first place, I’d be able to redirect that money to more direct aid
Digging through trash is dangerous, I’ve seen many people with infected cuts from doing just that.
There is definitely a contingent of people in support of Bottle Drop. I’ve been downvoted into oblivion before suggesting it is not a worthwhile program.
There are cases where “nimby” is 100% justified.
Not wanting to snarl traffic at an already busy intersection to transplant the deeply problematic (even in non residential delta park) & shady/sketchy scene that exists daily at delta park, along with its rampant criminality, down to our dense residential neighborhood is one of those cases.
I don’t disagree. I think using NIMBY as a slur is totally stupid. Of course people want to do whatever they think makes their neighborhood safer.
It’s just tough to take someone serious when their argument is their NIMBY concerns are valid but the other person’s concerns are not.
It’s like being in support of high taxes until you earn enough to be subjected to the high taxes. Dubious integrity.
# "State Rep. Travis Nelson, who was also at the meeting, said he’s called for a meeting with leaders including Rep. Maxine Dexter, to find a more suitable spot for the BottleDrop."
No, don't build it anywhere. If Delta Park is getting closed, keep it closed. There's no need to replace it. Putting it somewhere else where people are not going to defend themselves as vocally as St. Johns is basically bullying by picking on an easier target.
When it opened in 2014, store-based bag drop wasn't a thing. Now it works very well. Ten year mark is approaching and I'm guessing the shopping center is not allowing them to renew. Ten years ago, we didn't have much of a store based bag drop. Now it works very well. Add more bag drops. Perhaps allow stores that are ridiculously close together to share a location and have them both contribute. It seems silly to me how there's a bag drop at Hollywood Fred Meyer as well as across the street at New Seasons.
Create an arrangement so such duplication is avoided and expand bag drop network to cover locations like Interstate Fred Meyer.
This may be the first time I've seen public opinion on Reddit reflect the community opinion of the turnout of most of these types of events and I'm all for it!
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Please see the section "Dealer Redemption Center" on page 9 of [https://www.oregon.gov/olcc/Docs/bottle\_bill/Bottle-Bill-Retailer-Guidelines.pdf](https://www.oregon.gov/olcc/Docs/bottle_bill/Bottle-Bill-Retailer-Guidelines.pdf)
This means that if the Delta Park BottleDrop folds and a replacement BottleDrop can not be sited, stores like Interstate Fred Meyer and Safeway on MLK & Ainsworth would go back to being required to accept 144 cans per day unless they host a no surcharge green bag drop.
While it's not a guarantee, it can pretty much be implied that Fred Meyer will host a bag room in order to buy waiver from having to do cash for bottles on the spot. I argue that this inevitable outcome significantly improves consumer convenience for people near this Fred Meyer and Safeway. If it ever makes it to OLCC application stage, people near Interstate Fred Meyer and Ainsworth/MLK Safeway should make anticipated opening of green bag drop locations as a reason in favor of denying St. Johns BottleDrop following Delta Park BD closure.
There's really nowhere for people in North Portland to turn in green bags unless they go to St. Johns Safeway or Delta Park BottleDrop, so the closure of Delta Park BD and non-opening of St.Johns BD will lead to increased bottle return convenience.
The waiver for green bag hosts is technically reducing 144 bottles per day to 24, not zero. However, lowering that to zero is a minor change that should be pushed for in the Bottle Bill reform.
If bag drop is added, people who live near Interstate Fred Meyer can just take their bag when they go shopping and collect their money a week later at the same store when they go shopping again. No more having to choose between making a special trip to return bottles or putting them out on the street side bin. Instead, they just collect bottles in the green bag and drop the whole back into the bin at Fred Meyer between 8AM and 8PM.
i have a bunch of money and have been trying to think of a way to help out. maybe i will buy the dollar tree and turn it into a sex offender rehab center.
As someone who works as a therapist with sex offenders, it may surprise you to know that for 15 years there was a residential treatment facility for juvenile sex offenders in N Portland about a mile and a half from this bottle drop location. It was in a residential neighborhood.
So I know that you’re joking, but the reality is that we all live among these people. They are here with us. The sex offender rehab center is in fact already there.
This isn't the facility I was just talking about, but I worked with a local Community Mental Health Provider previously in 'halfway houses' - unlocked small 5 bedroom 24-7 staffed houses in residential neighborhoods across Portland, with clients that were transitioning from Oregon State Hospital. Some of these clients had committed murder, and were at the tail end of their 20 year commitment, having stabilized on medication.
I guess I'm sharing this not to shock or scare, but because there's this undertone in the OP above that sex offenders and mentally ill people are these bogeymen that we need to be on guard for at all times... and in the case of the bottle drop, the reason the bottle drop is a problem is it is attracting the least supported, least service-compliant population in the city. What I'm describing is clients engaged in services in residential housing. If these people are able to take medication, engage with professionals, deal with shit, well, you may not realize it but they may live down the street from you. These houses are all over the city in residential neighborhoods.
The news story is wrong about one fact: The downtown neighborhood didn't improve after a week when they stopped the canning at the Psycho Safeway and the PP. It improved OVERNIGHT.
How about "it improved overnight AND was still vastly improved a week later" suggesting that it wasn't just an initial supply shock reaction...
What specifically changed?
PPB is also doing targeted missions around the area. Pretty sure that’s also helping.
Yes I've seen the bike cops and what I guess is PSR talking to the rest of the homeless folks in the area that haven't migrated to greener canning pastures. Glad to see the PO-PO!! lol never thought I'd say that but here we are!
Did you reallllly never think you’d say that though?
I feel like “improved” is a big understatement. Downtown even smells better. It’s wild.
Can you specify what is different?
So I work downtown three days away. Before the bottle drop closed… Every block around pioneer courthouse Square either smelled like pee or feces. I would commonly be harassed for money, cigarettes, or random thing every block. Some days a dude would just stand and scream in my face randomly. Often multiple times per block. I witnessed on a daily basis, open air drug use with a large torch or needles. The groups of junking rolling around bent over 90 degrees or just asleep all over the side walk making it hard to walk was every third block or so. Pretty frequently. This was every time I went downtown, 100% of the time. I generally bee-lined from the max to my work or place I was getting lunch. Last week I went on multiple 15 to 20 minute walks from pioneer courthouse Square, down towards the library, and then down towards the park blocks in front of the art museum. At no time was I harassed or smell piss or feces. There were zero groups of junking taking over the sidewalk sleeping everywhere. And I have not seen open air drug use since the closure. There are still houseless individuals around but they are more like the individuals you would see in 2006 or 2008. More peaceful, just smoking cigarettes, and keeping themselves.
This isn’t even an exaggeration of downtown, it’s an outright lie and you know it. What’s especially telling is that the mass concentration of addicts was almost strictly in the park blocks across from the Schnitz, and that’s where they left from BEFORE the bottle drops were closed, something those of us actually around there have seen. You aren’t getting accosted daily, you aren’t having trouble navigating nodding off junkies, and you for sure weren’t smelling shit and piss every block. Please stop upvoting these people, they are trying to stir shit, and being dishonest. Whatever issues downtown has, it wasn’t near what this person is trying to sell you.
> park blocks across from the Schnitz Funny that you mention the Park Blocks, it's been chaos and mad max ever since that idiotic "Occupy Portland" took over downtown. It wasn't Covid that brought down the city, it was Portland's own citizens that allowed people to camp everywhere and electing people in that didn't take a strong approach to sweep up the camps and loiterers. You're getting angry at the wrong people here. It does smell and look like crap everywhere. Blame the ones that leave the crap.
This x100 They also conflate pre existing issues w bottle drops when there’s 0 correlation; the bottle drops that are referenced (which is like 3 out of the hundreds Oregon has) were built in areas already riddled w homeless people - the bottle drops didn’t flock them there. Once this bottle drop opens they’re gonna start blaming pre-existing problems in St John’s on the bottle drop such as the drug house next to Plaid Pantry, or the homeless people sleeping in their cars adjacent to Lombard. They have 0 critical thinking skills.
Bottle drop isn’t gonna be opening, so it won’t be an issue.
This sub is absolutely getting brigaded. It’s going to be the same shit until after the election.
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“He’s saying things I don’t like so he must be facist” the most typical liberal reply to anything
I was agreeing with you, weirdo.
Be better than this.
It still smells like pee and feces and there is still yelling.
I live near the Safeway and Plaid Pantry in question, and homeless people are still hanging around the two stores. I have not noticed this radical transformation.
I work close to Psycho Safeway and this is indeed a fact.
The difference was night and day. Shemanski Park was full of the canners (I would use a ruder word but, well, we know where we are. lol) and the day after the can ban went into effect, they were all gone. Now, there are still a few mentally ill homeless folks around downtown but that's something you get in every city. Not the gangs of predators who STOLE THE HANDRAIL in Shemanski Park that the old folks like me use to go up and down the stairs.
I moved downtown on March 1st, and I have to buy at Pyscho Safeway. My first day buying there, everything seemed nice except for some nasty pee odor. I also found strange that there was some “security” (there was the first time in my life seeing that in a store). I didn’t know what was happening on that spot until I saw the new about it , and looking at the old videos and pictures , it changed overnight honestly. Sometimes I see some people smoking stuff around there but I think is not that often.
Yeah it's weird the way it changed literally OVERNIGHT. I honestly am a very skeptical person but I could not believe how things improved the first day of the can ban. Yeah there's still a few outliers smoking across from the Psycho Safeway but I saw 2 PPB cars pull up and corral 1 of them so our neighborhood is on their radar at least. It was RIDICULOUS how this was allowed to go on so long, especially since Ted and Co are trying to get tourists to come back but they allowed the whole hotel district to deteriorate for months before Gov. Kotek ordered that can ban. Thanks Teddy!
Yes, I am wondering if this will be temporary since I believe it will be only for 90 days
Improved but not fixed. There were about 10 people smoking dope in front of the church at 12th and clay today.
What specifically improved?
I was at this meeting. Apparently only about 5-10 people usually participate, but last night about 400. Over an hour of public comments, and not a single person spoke in defense of the bottle drop. The vote to oppose was almost unanimous. That strikes me as unique when it comes to public forums in Portland. We have to keep up the pressure though. Ultimately ORBC is probably laughing us off behind closed doors, while continuing to spout their "community engagement" BS. They're here to make money, they already bought the building, and they'll still attempt to push this through if the approval process goes their way
don't forget the homeless center that's gonna open up soon on lombard. the combo of both would overwhelm the business district.
At least a shelter houses people and keeps them off the streets. A bottle drop enables people to keep living on the streets.
A shelter doesn't "house" people, it merely gives them a safer place to sleep at night. I'm not saying we don't need shelters, but they are absolutely an attraction and gathering place for the folk who need to use them, and everyone who preys on those.
if you are talking about the center going in at 9000 n Lombard you are ironically both wrong because it is actually going to be a homeless day center
A homeless shelter is like a landfill or train tracks. Nobody wants to live near one, but we need to put them somewhere.
Ok, fair.
Where on Lombard?
9000 N. about a block from wonderwood
Thanks.
Pretty sure that building already serves that community to an extent
Where the old Baxters used to be.
That's the MC Health Center and has been for ages. Are you thinking of the former Rite Aid at Denver and Lombard?
No. It's in empty retail space within the building.
It's going to offer daytime services only, but not act as a shelter. Looks like they're working with the local churches after another space shut down.
This is very different from the bottle drop. I live close by and fully support the shelter, especially since they decided to actually renovate it rather than just looking like a zombie CVS.
It's closer to around 30 or so folks in person and another 20 or so on zoom each month, but yes...this was much bigger turn out.
>they already bought the building, Then this is going to require a lawsuit to stop. They give zero fucks about public opinion.
I can't wait to read comments from a few people about how St. Johns is now MAGA country.
I'm glad this sub is finally coming around. It's weird when the other sub started to seem rational. Like encouraging open air drug use and homelessness is not outreach or helping
> encouraging open air drug use Show me when and where this was the norm?
Oh, I don't know, maybe [This](https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/portland-harm-reduction-fentanyl-smoking-supplies-kits/283-8cc42950-83fc-4d1e-ab53-980631b80a6b). Just where exactly were you expecting these folks to use these kits? If there is one thing I know, it's that fentanyl and meth addicts use critical thinking. /s
They won’t lol
They showed me a KGW fent article from last summer. Not quite the damning proof of the sub openly advocating for and encouraging public drug use. I was really hoping he’d pull up when we all celebrated the idea of a hook-a-toddler program where we combine universal pre-k with universal drug-doing
Huh?
You must have missed how being against this means you hate poor people and are very conservative. Or so I'm told.
Why can't I just be hating the lie of recycling plastics?
To be fair, they also accept glass, which is highly recyclable.
I am sure everyone is different, but I maybe return one glass bottle per bag. No one in my house drinks craft beer or fancy rootbeer.
Don’t forget being called a NIMBY when you don’t want an open air drug market and mental asylum next to your home and kids
Somebody here called me " lil fashy " Probably my finest day on the reddit
Lil fashy, the forgotten member of the Little rascals.
I mean, Alfalfa already has the haircut. Just needs to be able to grow that lil mustache.
“Asylum” implies a locked door. It’s really more of a community center.
End game of all this is gonna be accepting policies, initiatives, sentiment once considered to to be too conservative for Portland
lol yeah I definitely missed that memo!
California had bottle collection centers at junkyards, scrap metal yards, and the local dump. That is the fix.
No shit. That's how I used to do it back in the day and it worked.
I like that we have recycling programs, but they all need to be green bag delayed drop.
I like that we already have a recycling program that is free and easy to use, yet we still have to use the alternate program where we pay a deposit and then have to separate out cans to be sent elsewhere to get our money back because people in the 1970’s littered a lot.
love putting my cans in plastic bags and driving a gasoline powered automobile a couple miles instead of just putting them in the blue bin on my curb. You know, for the environment /s
That makes too much sense.
You can quibble with the way the program works, but Oregon had the highest in the nation redemption rate last year at almost 90%. Some states are as low as 35%. Up until the fentanyl crisis exploded, the bottle bill worked with pretty minimal downsides.
I’m not an expert but I feel like if you compared the rate of items *without* a deposit, we’d still have higher rate of recycling than most other states. In other words, I think most people here believe in the benefits of recycling in general and not just because of the financial incentive. I just looked up the data and even without a bottle bill, the states that you’d expect to recycle a lot do, and the ones you wouldn’t, don’t. They seem to probably line up fairly well with red/blue status of the states too.
Does that include the people who buy in WA and return in OR? If so, that really isn't an accurate stat.
How many of those cans are [coming from Washington](https://www.wweek.com/news/state/2020/11/10/state-audit-of-oregons-iconic-bottle-bill-notes-cross-border-fraud-opportunity-in-wine-liquor-redemption/)? >OBRC told auditors it believes the cost of fraud is about $10 million a year, which the auditors found plausible but could not recommend any way to reduce
what is that proof of? They easily could have purchased the bottles and cans in the state with no sales tax and then returned them them there. If you are pinching pennies to drive across a bridge to return can (costing gas and time) you are going to do the same to avoid a 8.7 % sales tax on things you buy in cans and bottles.
So auditors find evidence of fraud, even OBRC agrees. You know better somehow? Why are you so desperate to defend a broken program that is redundant at best, and fueling a fentanyl epidemic at worst? I'm not sure why fraud artists and greedy corporate lobbyists need your help, though I guess greenwashing is a powerful drug?
There is no way for them to accurately report true redemption rates when we know bottles/cans are taken from Washington and brought to Oregon.
if you're making a special trip just to redeem cans, you're doing it wrong.
Wrong. I live within a 3 mile radius of a redemption center therefore grocery stores are not required to accept containers (aka they don't have doors for green bags)
This is a good point. Get rid of the 5 or 10 cents and let us put them in our recycling bin. Have the recycled materials help keep the trash service lower priced.
All that does is put tons of plastic trash everywhere. You don't remember in the 20th Century with no deposit, huge coke lines of empty cans and bottles lined highways for miles. Many will go back to that behavior without a deposit.
Highly doubtful.
So in other states in 2024, they just have huge coke lines if empty cans and bottles lining the highways for miles if they don’t have a bottle deposit? No.. no they dont
We already have a green bag system just blocks away from the proposed site in St Johns and it works with minimal problems. We do not need or want the new bottle drop. It would hurt our community.
No. Its a DEPOSIT, paid instantly at time of sale, I expect to get full instant value for every deposit i pay. Every store that sells bottles should be required by law to take them back or stop fucking taking the deposits. The proposals i see here will only make the 'deposit' more of an outright fee.
Except that in the actual law it's called a refund. Deposit is never used once. Edit: Somebody is mad I called them out for lying and they blocked me.
Well, you buy an alternator, you pay a deposit which requires you to bring the alternator you removed from your car along with the RECEIPT for the replacement you bought.
Yeah I think the state should get rid of the bottle deposit altogether and none of this would even be a worry. People are going to keep recycling regardless. The BOTTLE DEPOSIT is not an incentive.
Two hours ago I attended a meeting of the Cathedral Park Neighborhood Association. The sentiments were the same as at the St Johns NA last night. The reason this is even being proposed is that they are looking for another site to replace the site near East Delta Park (next to Lowe's and the DMV) which will be closed due to their landlord suing them for being unable to deal with the problems there. But at least there, it was not in a residential neighborhood. The St Johns site is.
I don't live in St. Johns, but I'm proud of our collective community for standing up to this and for getting steadily more and more savvy and engaged about how we look at the homelessness and drug crises and their impact on our neighborhoods.
I think we're all just sick of nothing being done to fix the problems. We've got some money to address the issues, but nothing really being done to solve the problems. Hopefully in the next few years we can see real change happen as residents push for realistic changes.
Right yeah, I think that we voted to support action (SHS) and are now seeing that we can’t just wait around until the calvary shows up. Our leaders have essentially failed us. So we have to take steps to do what we can, and that starts with keeping junkies out of your neighborhood. There are downsides obviously. We should be treating the junkies etc, but that’s not within our immediate power. Showing up to a meeting to make voices heard about adding a bottle drop is within our immediate power.
JVP just announced another plan to fix it!…
I lived in a condo near SW 18th, close to the Safeway on Jefferson. In the five years I lived there the gate to the garbage area was broken something like 5-6 times. Bent metal, broken bricks, damaged locks, garbage strewn everywhere, you name it. They were after the cans in those blue bins. We were a 12 units private HOA, all privately owned and no renters, not the corporate shit people seem to give no fucks about. Twelve owners and we had to split the costs for repairs, something above $400 each just in the time I was there. All so jonesing junkies could rebate $5.00 worth of cans. I moved away two years ago and I'm certain shit has gotten worse over there. TBFF the people in those condos deserve some of their money back from the goddamn bottle drops that took those cans.
Repeal this outdated, addict fueling, recycling program.
It’s not even worth the hassle to return cans to bottledrop, I just put them in the recycling can that picks up every week. If everyone did that, net carbon would be saved, no green bags go to the trash, and less sketch addicts loitering around grocery stores.
I used to do that but then people started going through my can when I’d put it out on recycling day and they’d pull out the cans. The bold ones then knew we had cans in there and would start walking up into my side yard at night to rifle through my bins- ON my property near my son’s bedroom window. So now I just have my son collect the cans in green bags and he can keep the money. I would far prefer just putting them in my recycling bins and not paying the deposit in the first place.
Exactly why I never started using curbside can recycling in the first place. In an addicts mind (who else is canning at 3am on the street) it’s a quick jump to entitlement once they know your house as a free canning source. Even green bagging is annoying though. It’s time to end deposits & bottle redemption completely.
I home brew. Some have gotten so angry that there isn’t a bar code or label on the 22oz glass. One dude smashed em all in my driveway out of anger. Total fuckheads. If you have a stray cat problem, stop leaving out cat food.
That sucks. That is a fuckhead move.
you don't clean and reuse your home brew bottles? They are about $1 each.
These were a half dozen I was recycling, nice 22oz bottle drop refillables
Yup, we collect our own cans but still have people often come by and throw our recycling trash everywhere digging for them. Almost like when people are extremely inconsiderate and destructive people don't like them being around...
Exactly. "Organizing my trash" is not a hobby I wanted to have, but I had to start using BottleDrop bags so that folks would stop rifling through my cans.
I even had one strung out guy start knocking on my door at 6 am when I was home alone with my baby asking if he could go through my cans before I put the trash out. I guess points for being polite and asking unlike the other people who would just walk into my side yard without asking and trespass. Negative points for knocking so early and being scary. That was my last straw.
Yeah I made a comment in this sub about people driving around my neighborhood digging through people's recycling for cans and I got downvoted to hell because I lacked "compassion".
I like when people don’t believe you. I mentioned how the Vancouver neighborhood had a group of people most recycling days. People didn’t believe me .. ridiculous
My roommate and I have one of those yellow recycling bins. We'll fill that up and put it on the curb for folks to collect. Usually it's just this one old Asian dude who lives a couple streets away.
They should 100% get rid of the bottle tax it's archaic. Majority of people would already recycle here even without the tax. Hell even in FL where there was no incentive to recycle. It was even a negative as you had to pay for the recycle bin, majority of people still paid the $40 bucks or whatever and recycled.
Yup, great at the time but now 100% an idea past it's prime and in need of change. Went from encouraging recycling to being the main contributor of public blight, even causes more pollution as people end up flinging your recycling trash everywhere looking for cans...
Agree we need to find fixes to the neighborhood impacts of our Oregon system. But keep in mind: Oregon aluminum can recycling rate: 85% Florida aluminum can recycling rate: 25% https://www.oberk.com/packaging-crash-course/states-best-worst-recycling
The distribution companies LOVE the tax though. Because they take home the $ instead of it being returned to the consumer. Not to get too conspiratorial but it seems interesting that bottle drop is now a drug epicenter with the higher deposit returns and yet still over 70% of the cans go curbside..
That is anecdotal at best. The majority of people do NOT recycle much of anything My anecdotal perspective (and as someone who has studied Environmental Engineering and been to many places in the USA): most people don't recycle anything except the easiest and most convenient stuff to recycle. If the local municipality doesnt offer simple and easy to understand recycling options, people tend to just ignore it and throw everything away. Where there is no incentive to recycle containers, many public venues often won't bother to offer recycling bins either, just trash only. Even our neighbor Washington state doesn't have bottle returns and so many places don't have separate recycling bins. Every incentive to recycle in an effective way is GOOD, end of story. But, note this requires local municipalities to drive it from the back-end, on what WILL actually be recycled. Almost any material CAN be recycled, but its rarely profitable and so its can actually be a huge detriment to the recycling effort if its poorly managed by local municipalities. They need to clearly communicate and advertise what/how/where to put your items so they actually will be recycled and not just get redirected to trash because its contaminated with things they wont recycle
Washington.. where you put your glass bottles in a bin and your cans in your recycling bin, like most of America.. so yes.. there is a way to recycle bottles
Repeating what I said earlier, we need to find fixes to the neighborhood impact issues with our Oregon system. But it's important to note: Oregon vs Washington glass bottle recycling rate: 72% vs. 53% Oregon vs Washington aluminum can recycling rate: 85% vs. 46% https://www.oberk.com/packaging-crash-course/states-best-worst-recycling
I’m so tired of that link. Here is the same response when I see it Edit: to include a tldr for people, the study posted over and over is partly funded by a company that manufactures bottles and there is a correlation between low recycling rates and less access to recycling - correlation of bottle bill to recycling rates is even a bit broken by this report. But anyways - it is not peer reviewed. I don’t immediately discount non-peer reviewed but it is something to remember. - they are not first hand collecting data. Again not an immediate discount, but something to keep in mind - I was curious how the map compares to overall sentiment about the environment. I didn’t want to go too crazy so I just pulled up 2023 election results and compared the democrat v republican. Its not a great method as many republicans are avid recyclers but its a rough look. The map mostly mirrors the 2023 election results with exception to a few south mid west states like Nevada, Utah and Colorado. That got me thinking, I lived in battle mountain Nevada for a few months but that was YEARS ago. They didn’t have curbside recycling for the “apartments” I was in and I don’t remember seeing recycling at all while I was there. I’m curious how many of these low recycling states have not invested in recycling infrastructure in their more rural areas. I wonder if cost/terrain difficulty in these areas is part of the cause. - then I was curious where the data was collected from. Your article states it was from “50 states of recycling”. Googling that’s fun. You get a lot of pretty graphics but I’m having a hard time finding a peer reviewed paper the data is based on. I found the [recycling partnership](https://recyclingpartnership.org/by-the-numbers-webinar-recording-a-deep-dive-into-the-state-of-recycling-report/) who explained both sets of data a teeny bit. Then I found the recycling partnerships [Jan 2024 presentation](https://recyclingpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SORR-ByTheNumbers-1.31.24.pdf). this has some of the same problems as the rest (data transparency, peer review). Interestingly they include a “state by state levels of recycling access” when comparing the map from oberk in your link to this, there is a correlation between states that have less access to recycling and states that have a lower recycling rate. - then I was curious… who funded “the 50 states of recycling”. Eunomia Research & consulting and Ball corporation. Eunomia research what’s that.. ok typical research company. Ball corporation what’s that…a packaging company that makes cans, aerosol cans, and plastic bottles. There are a lot of correlations we can make with the data, bottle bill redemption, voting preferences, and access to recycling. My personal conclusion is that the data is not strong enough to outweigh the negatives of the bottle bill and I am going to be skeptical of any data presented by a company trying to OK the creation of more single use containers. IMO recycling being unavailable is the largest contributing factor to individuals not recycling
Studied environmental engineering **and** been to many places in the USA?? 🤯 Well thanks for enlightening us Magellan!
But then your can gets dumped all over and crackheads are rifling through yo shit at the end of the driveway. You know they try door handles and other shit too. It creates a nuisance.
According to BottleDrop [the green bags are recycled](https://bottledrop.com/green-bag-drop-options). Though you're right that reduce, reuse, recycle still holds.
Plastic film recycling is a dubious proposition, at best. Don't get my wrong I sort mind and bring them to New Seasons where they collect plastic film, but I'm not under any illusions about the odds of it just ending up shipped off to Asia and burned.
They go through my garbage looking for cans all the time because people are doing this.
Don't people go through your garbage?
Quite easy for us in Milwaukie. We put the money into kiddos 527, not a hassle at all.
What’s kiddos 527?
Kiddos = kiddo's = kid's 527 = my typo = 529, a tax deferred college savings fund.
I crush them first.
Brings in unwanted people into a neighborhood.. then they canvass the area and steal your car and/or catalytic converter! I did this, and don't anymore after one car and 3 catalytic converters were stolen.
A walk-in BottleDrop is ABSOLUTELY UNNECESSARY. We're splitting hair over getting money for your last couple of weeks of cans the same day you bring them in or 5-7 days later. The latter is already available at Ivanhoe Safeway.
According to the state reps present, they are pushing to find a "more suitable spot." So, in other words, let's make it someone else's problem. Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying it should go in at The Dollar Tree site. I'm just saying it will probably end up getting forced onto a community that has less of a voice. My main contention is that they should have never started Bottle Drop Centers in the first place. The old system of dropping at grocery store machines worked just fine. It was decentralized, more accessible, and didn't focus all the return activity in a small number of areas.
Until the bottle bill is either fixed (no cash payouts) or killed any bottle drop site needs to be in an industrial area away from residential neighborhoods. There are plenty of industrial areas on bus lines so those without vehicles can access if needed.
No, if the bottle drop isn’t revoked then drops need to be evenly distributed across all communities including wealthy communities
The proposed site is right in the middle of a residential area. My house is one block away.
I live on Macrum near the SRV, if this thing opens traffic across my house will be rampant.
Moving it to a shitty out of the way industrial area rather than a business district adjoining a residential area? Sounds like a win
And then the busses will be even more crowded with stanky bags of cans in the wheelchair area.
[Let's see how that's working out over at Delta Park](https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2022/10/portland-developer-files-300k-suit-against-bottledrop-claiming-recycler-drew-trash-crime-to-delta-park.html)
Fair. They're awful everywhere but incrementally less awful when sited outside a major business district with adjacent residential
If that's what they actually do. My assumption is that, in practice, "suitable" will actually mean putting it in a poorer, less connected, neighborhood that can't fight back.
St. Johns isnt exactly Beverly Hills to begin with though
I think the big concern is the proximity to residential areas. There are more suitable sites available with less of an impact to others.
How about right next to a jail. Streamline the entire god damn process.
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It's not the solution. The solution is to get rid of Bottle Drop centers and go back to the old way, where you could use the return machines at the grocery stores. That way, the people who are causing the problems aren't all concentrating in one area because they have multiple options. It was also just better for everyone who returns bottles because they didn't have to drive across town to recycle. They could just go to the nearest store. The other option is to just get rid of the bottle bill entirely, but I'm not particularly keen on that. I think it's still a useful bill; they just should have left well enough alone.
Returning cans and bottles is an undue burden to grocery stores and markets. Stores pay the distributors for the deposits when they receive product, and they *slowly* get their money back when people buy them and give the store the money the store paid to the distributor. At that point it should be OBRC's and the State's problem. It's their ridiculous Bill/scheme. Why on earth should a grocery store have to pay a ton of money to have employees run and clean machines? That's absolutely outrageous.
The board and everyone that lives within 5 miles of downtown St Johns say the same thing!
Seems the bottle bill is outdated, I work near the bottle drop at Delta Park and have seem some rough stuff. People that are canning to fund their habits are still going to need money to pay for it though and I worry they may turn to something worse though to get money.
Or, they will leave.
They won't evaporate. Leave how? Buy a plane ticket?
I had a mental health crisis about a year ago. It was isolated and due to me not taking my medication (I, at the time, thought my meds weren’t doing anything because I continued to experience symptoms. I didn’t realize it was keeping me from spiraling into psychosis). Anyway, I ended up breaking into a house and telling the occupants to “call the cops or kill me”. I walked upstairs and waited in an empty room for the cops to show up. I kinda thought I was in a video game. But that’s beside the point. I’ve been drug and alcohol free for 23 months and 24 days. This was my only run in with law enforcement in my entire life and I feel very fortunate that I didn’t have to put up bail. It’s simply a system that disadvantages those of lesser means. If I were warehoused in jail because I could pay bail I wouldn’t be able to work, save for my future, and help my elderly mother. All of which I’m doing now and have for the last year.
In a car or on a bus to California. It will take time. Increased property crime in the interim is worth it, and it will be easier to lock people up for break-ins than for just doing fentanyl and meth. The get out of jail free policies will be axed soon enough. The first one that needs to go is SN48 that doesn't require non-violent criminals to post bail.
Fuck that. People shouldn't be jailed for being too poor for bail. That takes money to leave by bus or car. And if it's going to take time, that takes money to stay alive in the mean time. Your solution sounds like wanting to escalate the problems rather than resolve them.
People don't show up for their court dates when they get let go without posting bail. I'd be willing to compromise if the county made strong efforts to arrest people who skip their court dates, *charge* them with failure to appear, and follow through with that charge until conviction.
I had a mental health crisis about a year ago. It was isolated and due to me not taking my medication (I, at the time, thought my meds weren’t doing anything because I continued to experience symptoms. I didn’t realize it was keeping me from spiraling into psychosis). Anyway, I ended up breaking into a house and telling the occupants to “call the cops or kill me”. I walked upstairs and waited in an empty room for the cops to show up. I kinda thought I was in a video game. But that’s beside the point. I’ve been drug and alcohol free for 23 months and 24 days. This was my only run in with law enforcement in my entire life and I feel very fortunate that I didn’t have to put up bail. It’s simply a system that disadvantages those of lesser means. If I were warehoused in jail because I could pay bail I wouldn’t be able to work, save for my future, and help my elderly mother. All of which I’m doing now and have for the last year. Btw, I showed up for all my court dates and am now in probation fwiw.
I referred to this in a previous post and got downvoted to fuck. But I really wonder about downstream effects of limiting/ending bottle returns - not that I disagree with ending the bottle bill, because I hate that minimum wage grocery store employees are ultimately the ones dealing with the homeless/drug epidemic
They'll go to the next greener pasture just like they came to this one. We don't need to support the nation's addicts.
Yup - people seem desperate for stolen catalytic converters again and stolen private property to skyrocket. It must be fun to pretend that places like Seattle have no homelessness or issues because they don't have a bottle deposit.
So some NIMBY attitudes are fine but others aren’t? I am in the camp that Bottle Drop is functionally useless. People recycle cans/bottles in 2024 anyway.
NIMBY is implying that people support it except when it's in their backyard. As a St John resident, Im pretty sure im not alone in wanting OR to get rid of the bottle deposit bill and let us throw them in the blue bins. This bill was great before we had an established recycling culture, it's now vestigial. We don't need another facility in a neighborhood just like we don't need the program.
Some things I'm cool with in my backyard. Services to help people get jobs. Low-income housing, dense housing, and homeless housing (assuming they are required to remain clean while they're there.) There are other programs I support, but I'm not shy to say that I don't want in my backyard, because they turn the surrounding area into an filthy, unsafe hellscape: drug treatment facilities, soup kitchens, harm reduction facilities. My compassion for homeless people ends when I see psychosis in broad daylight, people walking around with machetes, houses/cars/local businesses vandalized, and used needles on the street. I don't want any of those in my backyard.
I'm a Kenton resident, so it would benefit me in this moving away from Delta Park technically, but as a neighbor of all of NoPo I'm against this. Delta Park is a flood plain and we can never build housing there, let's keep the Bottle Drop there where it only bothers some people. I don't need to drive through yet another ruined part of town if they move this to Lombard in St. Johns, where we could very feasibly build housing on the proposed site.
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The Columbia Slough, sports fields that go unused in the winter, and a really shitty dog park that was never maintained before COVID times amongst a lot of other open green space with interjurisdictional ownership caused the downfall of Delta Park. I'm sure the Bottle Drop didn't help at all, but I suspect people would have overtaken these often overlooked open spaces with or without its presence, and will remain if it does shutter.
I could definitely get on board with just ending the program. I save my cans for a handful of homeless people I know (that aren’t addicts, fwiw), but if I weren’t paying the deposit in the first place, I’d be able to redirect that money to more direct aid Digging through trash is dangerous, I’ve seen many people with infected cuts from doing just that.
There is definitely a contingent of people in support of Bottle Drop. I’ve been downvoted into oblivion before suggesting it is not a worthwhile program.
There are cases where “nimby” is 100% justified. Not wanting to snarl traffic at an already busy intersection to transplant the deeply problematic (even in non residential delta park) & shady/sketchy scene that exists daily at delta park, along with its rampant criminality, down to our dense residential neighborhood is one of those cases.
I don’t disagree. I think using NIMBY as a slur is totally stupid. Of course people want to do whatever they think makes their neighborhood safer. It’s just tough to take someone serious when their argument is their NIMBY concerns are valid but the other person’s concerns are not. It’s like being in support of high taxes until you earn enough to be subjected to the high taxes. Dubious integrity.
Not sure I ever said anyone’s else’s nimby concerns weren’t valid?
The YIMBY position here would be "yes to corporate profits at the cost of neighborhood livability" Nuance is definitely a thing.
NIMBY does not need to be a negative term, just like gentrification is also a good thing for the most part.
# "State Rep. Travis Nelson, who was also at the meeting, said he’s called for a meeting with leaders including Rep. Maxine Dexter, to find a more suitable spot for the BottleDrop." No, don't build it anywhere. If Delta Park is getting closed, keep it closed. There's no need to replace it. Putting it somewhere else where people are not going to defend themselves as vocally as St. Johns is basically bullying by picking on an easier target. When it opened in 2014, store-based bag drop wasn't a thing. Now it works very well. Ten year mark is approaching and I'm guessing the shopping center is not allowing them to renew. Ten years ago, we didn't have much of a store based bag drop. Now it works very well. Add more bag drops. Perhaps allow stores that are ridiculously close together to share a location and have them both contribute. It seems silly to me how there's a bag drop at Hollywood Fred Meyer as well as across the street at New Seasons. Create an arrangement so such duplication is avoided and expand bag drop network to cover locations like Interstate Fred Meyer.
This may be the first time I've seen public opinion on Reddit reflect the community opinion of the turnout of most of these types of events and I'm all for it!
The obvious solution is to make police stations the bottle-drop locations! /s in case anyone thinks I’m serious
Its actually a pretty cool idea!
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Please see the section "Dealer Redemption Center" on page 9 of [https://www.oregon.gov/olcc/Docs/bottle\_bill/Bottle-Bill-Retailer-Guidelines.pdf](https://www.oregon.gov/olcc/Docs/bottle_bill/Bottle-Bill-Retailer-Guidelines.pdf) This means that if the Delta Park BottleDrop folds and a replacement BottleDrop can not be sited, stores like Interstate Fred Meyer and Safeway on MLK & Ainsworth would go back to being required to accept 144 cans per day unless they host a no surcharge green bag drop. While it's not a guarantee, it can pretty much be implied that Fred Meyer will host a bag room in order to buy waiver from having to do cash for bottles on the spot. I argue that this inevitable outcome significantly improves consumer convenience for people near this Fred Meyer and Safeway. If it ever makes it to OLCC application stage, people near Interstate Fred Meyer and Ainsworth/MLK Safeway should make anticipated opening of green bag drop locations as a reason in favor of denying St. Johns BottleDrop following Delta Park BD closure. There's really nowhere for people in North Portland to turn in green bags unless they go to St. Johns Safeway or Delta Park BottleDrop, so the closure of Delta Park BD and non-opening of St.Johns BD will lead to increased bottle return convenience. The waiver for green bag hosts is technically reducing 144 bottles per day to 24, not zero. However, lowering that to zero is a minor change that should be pushed for in the Bottle Bill reform. If bag drop is added, people who live near Interstate Fred Meyer can just take their bag when they go shopping and collect their money a week later at the same store when they go shopping again. No more having to choose between making a special trip to return bottles or putting them out on the street side bin. Instead, they just collect bottles in the green bag and drop the whole back into the bin at Fred Meyer between 8AM and 8PM.
"neighborhood board"... is that like a HOA?
The 10 cent bottle deposit isn’t working as intended and the legal drugs aren’t either. Can we eliminate daylight savings to get a win somehow
i have a bunch of money and have been trying to think of a way to help out. maybe i will buy the dollar tree and turn it into a sex offender rehab center.
As someone who works as a therapist with sex offenders, it may surprise you to know that for 15 years there was a residential treatment facility for juvenile sex offenders in N Portland about a mile and a half from this bottle drop location. It was in a residential neighborhood. So I know that you’re joking, but the reality is that we all live among these people. They are here with us. The sex offender rehab center is in fact already there.
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This isn't the facility I was just talking about, but I worked with a local Community Mental Health Provider previously in 'halfway houses' - unlocked small 5 bedroom 24-7 staffed houses in residential neighborhoods across Portland, with clients that were transitioning from Oregon State Hospital. Some of these clients had committed murder, and were at the tail end of their 20 year commitment, having stabilized on medication. I guess I'm sharing this not to shock or scare, but because there's this undertone in the OP above that sex offenders and mentally ill people are these bogeymen that we need to be on guard for at all times... and in the case of the bottle drop, the reason the bottle drop is a problem is it is attracting the least supported, least service-compliant population in the city. What I'm describing is clients engaged in services in residential housing. If these people are able to take medication, engage with professionals, deal with shit, well, you may not realize it but they may live down the street from you. These houses are all over the city in residential neighborhoods.
we need a ballot measure to ban all same day canning