A look at the changes coming to Oregon’s Bottle Bill

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek recently signed a piece of legislation that makes notable changes to Oregon’s landmark Bottle Bill. The new rules allow grocery and convenience stores across the state to reduce the hours that customers can redeem cans and bottles for cash. They also allow retailers in downtown Portland to stop accepting containers altogether if they’re close enough to an “alternative redemption site” such as The People’s Depot, which processes returns from people whose primary income comes from redeeming beverage containers.

Taylor Cass Talbott is the co-founder and co-executive director of Ground Score Association, which operates The People’s Depot. Kris Brown is the operational manager for The People’s Depot. They both join us to talk about the changes and about ongoing concerns around how the Bottle Bill is interacting with the state’s homelessness and drug crises.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. On Tuesday, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed legislation that significantly changes Oregon’s landmark Bottle Bill. Under the new law, grocery and convenience stores across the state can reduce redemption hours. Retailers in downtown Portland can stop accepting containers altogether if they’re close enough to an “alternative redemption site.” Right now, Portland only has one of those alternative sites. It’s called The People’s Depot.

Taylor Cass Talbott is the co-founder and co-executive director of Ground Score Association, the nonprofit that operates The People’s Depot. Kris Brown is the depot’s operational manager. They’re part of the coalition that pushed for these changes, and they both join us now. It’s good to have you both back on the show.

Taylor Cass Talbott: Thanks so much.

Kris Brown: Thank you for having us again, Dave.

Miller: So Taylor, first – I gave a pretty abbreviated version, but I want to understand more fully these changes to this landmark, first-in-the-nation Bottle Bill that so many Oregonians are proud of. What’s this going to mean for retailers statewide? What would it allow them to do or allow them to stop doing?

Cass Talbott: Right. This bill, it primarily deals with retailers that are in cities above 500,000, so that’s really just Portland in Oregon. And it recognizes this concept of alternative redemption. So these redemption centers like ours, that are serving people who redeem cans and bottles on a daily or near daily basis – so we’re talking mostly about can and bottle collectors or canners – for retailers that are within three-and-a-half miles of one of those alternative redemption centers, they can send their customers to redeem at those alternative redemption centers instead of at the retailer.

Miller: Meaning they can say no, we will not accept any cans or bottles at all if we’re in this pretty circumscribed area, if you think about the state of Oregon, as we’re talking about, a three-mile radius just within Portland itself?

Cass Talbott: Right, three-and-a-half miles, but with the idea that most of these retailers will still continue carrying on with these dealer redemption centers that are operated by the distributors, to be able to accept like a green bag, like bulk collection. So they really want to push redemption in that direction and then send people who are wanting to do hand counts for larger quantities of cans and bottles, oftentimes, into our types of operations.

Miller: But aren’t there also changes statewide, if less profound ones?

Cass Talbott: There are. So one of the changes is that it allows what are called low impact convenient zones – places that don’t receive a lot of cans and bottles – [to] actually combine two convenient zones. So that does, to some degree, reduce the convenience for people living in rural areas. It’s our hope that maybe in the future there may also be alternative redemption options for those communities as well.

Miller: What’s going to change in terms of the hours that these locations can provide, in terms of offering these services?

Cass Talbott: So one of the big requests from retailers was to reduce a redemption happening at night and so now redemption will be limited from the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Miller: What’s the idea behind that change?

Cass Talbott: The idea is that retailers, especially convenience stores that may just have one person on staff at night, and then they’re called in to people who are coming in to redeem sometimes a large number of cans and bottles in the middle of the night… And they didn’t want to have to send their staff to do that in the middle of the night, where it might be even a little bit sometimes scary for them to maybe go out into the parking lot and count cans.

Miller: Kris, you were on last year talking about what turned out to be a failed effort to revamp Oregon’s Bottle Bill, an effort that was successful this year. But when you were on, I asked how you’d feel about changes that would allow retail locations to not accept returns. This is part of what you said …

Brown [recording]: I feel like retail locations should still have redemption because people go to those grocery stores to buy groceries. And I feel like grocery stores are a conduit of bringing all those bottles and cans into the environment, so they should have some kind of responsibility to bring what they can back as due diligence to our society.

Miller: So that was last year. Under this new law, as we just heard, especially in inner Portland, stores can completely stop accepting bottles and cans, and every location can limit their hours. Have you changed your mind on this issue, broadly?

Brown: No, I believe that grocery stores should still be part of the redemption chain. And our conversations that we’ve had with the grocery stores and the OBRC – they still want to continue with their green bag drops. They just want to divert hand counts and whatnot towards us instead. So I believe that the grocery stores and convenience stores should still have to do their part, because there’s still conduits of bringing bottles and cans into the pollution stream. And we just want to be part of the system in our own way, just doing our part, because there should be a myriad of options for redemption.

Miller: Can you give us a sense, Taylor, for how this bill this year came to be?

Cass Talbott: Yeah, this bill really grew out of the concerns of downtown retailers who didn’t want to be taking cans and bottles. Obviously, our state and much of the country is facing a pretty severe homelessness crisis, since 2019 with the onset of the fentanyl crisis. The visibility of challenges in the street are heightened and a lot of people want to scapegoat can and bottle collectors, or they want to scapegoat really the Bottle Bill as a source of that addiction and homelessness – which is a false accusation. However, it was a powerful accusation.

So the retailers rallied around this idea that, OK, we want to limit redemption at retail sites. But they were also looking at the success of The People’s Depot and the fact that we were taking in, I mean, 6% of the cans and bottles in the area and really, in the two-and-a-half hours that we operate, vastly more containers than the retailers in that general area. So they started to speak up on some of the calls that were being amassed by different stakeholders in the Bottle Bill. They started calling out The People’s Depot as really the solution. And that started to amass this broader coalition around the idea of, let’s find a solution for The People’s Depot to be able to operate for more than two-and-a-half hours a day, and at the same time, a solution for retailers. So, try to find a win-win for both.

Miller: So Kris, let’s turn to the changes that are embedded in this for The People’s Depot. It’s been a little while since we’ve talked about the model. How has The People’s Depot been working for the last few years?

Brown: Oh, it’s been working fantastic. We’re more efficient than ever. We processed 9.5 million containers last year.

Miller: Nine-and-a-half million containers.

Brown: Yes, and that’s all within a two-and-a-half hour span, five days a week. So we’re only open about 11 hours altogether. We run five sorting tables a day. And we’re serving anywhere from 150 to, our best days, 176 people within that two-and-a-half hour period. It shows that there’s a real need for what we do. We are successful. At the same time, we’re just out of space. We have maximized the amount of time and we have maximized the space that we’re using, and we’re thankful …

Miller: The space … this is still under the Morrison Bridge?

Brown: Absolutely.

Miller: Who works there? And give us a sense for who you’re serving.

Brown: So we actually did a survey of 150 people who use The People’s Depot and it’s actually surprising how diverse our customer base is. Only 55% of them surveyed were homeless, 19% lived in shelters and the other 35%, they either owned a home or rented an apartment. Most of the people that we do serve, 7 out of 10 have physical or mental disabilities, despite only 14% of them receiving benefits.

So we have a very diverse customer base that uses our services. And I think the big reason why we have so many people now is because even if we have 20 to 30 people in our line, you’re only going to wait 15 minutes. While at most of the places, if there’s 20 to 30 people in line waiting for their cans to be redeemed, that’s a two to three hour wait. So people show up for us because it’s quick, they could get out fast and they know that we’re there for them.

And that’s something that I’m proud of. The other thing that we’re really proud of is during this polling, 87% of our customer base said that they feel safe in line, which is something that I’m incredibly proud of.

Miller: Why did you ask that question? I mean, what were you curious to learn and how would that have informed the way you operate?

Brown: Well, there are a bunch of different negative stories on bottle redemption centers and whatnot, and there’s not a lot of data on people who collect bottles and cans for a living. That’s something that we want to change. We want to know who was actually collecting bottles and cans. And something that we want to combat is the stereotype that all bottle and can collectors are all drug users, are all fentanyl users or whatnot. And from my personal experience – because I collected bottles and cans for almost five years when I was homeless – that’s not true. Most of them suffer from physical and mental disabilities. A lot of us want to work, but there’s not a lot of options for us to work once we’re homeless.

Miller: What’s going to change as a result of this bill, in terms of the way The People’s Depot operates? What are you getting out of this bill?

Brown: I’m personally not getting much other than hopefully a safe working environment for my workers. The People’s Depot has been operating underneath the Morrison Bridge without power or electricity. The one thing that I’m most excited about is my workers, like the people who work at The People’s Depot, they’re going to get more hours, which means that they can afford to invest in themselves more.

The majority of TPD staff, they’re working anywhere from 15 to 18 hours a week right now. I’m hoping to get them to 30 hours a week. We’ll be open five hours a day, which is double what we’re open right now. So it’s just investing in the staff, investing in our infrastructure and really just showing that we could be part of the system.

Miller: Taylor, where is the money for these investments going to be coming from?

Cass Talbott: Currently we’re funded by the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative and we have a little bit of money from the city of Portland, Portland Solutions. But the additional money to enable us to get into a brick and mortar, and potentially next year, even expand into mobile redemption options, that will come from the retailers that are in our convenience zone.

Miller: So the deal is – correct me if I’m wrong – that they said, OK, let us not have to collect cans and bottles ourselves because we don’t like it right now. And in return, we’ll give Ground Score some money and you can operate The People’s Depot in a more robust way. We’ll give you some money to do that.

Cass Talbott: Exactly.

Miller: Win-win as far as they’re concerned, and as far as you’re concerned.

Cass Talbott: Yeah, we want to collect cans and bottles, and we want to serve canners, so let us do that work – and they agreed.

Miller: How much concern do you have that people, say, who are on the west side or the outskirts of that three-and-a-half mile radius, that getting to where you are now, it would be onerous? So let’s say that they have a shopping cart full of cans. And getting to The People’s Depot, if a lot of other places close to them do take up the state’s offer that they don’t have to accept cans, you’re going to just be pretty far away.

Cass Talbott: Well, it’s just the retailers within the three-and-a-half mile radius that can absolve themselves of their requirement to take cans and bottles. So three-and-a-half miles, I mean, we find that the canners that are customers at our depot are coming vastly further. I mean, on average, they’re traveling 11 miles to collect and redeem containers in a given day. Most of the time they’re going to multiple redemption sites because of the limits in the cans and bottles that redemption sites take. So, yeah, we actually haven’t heard that expressed as a concern amongst our customers.

Miller: You mentioned two different kinds of expansion going forward that are possible or maybe likely: a brick and mortar and mobile. So let’s start with the brick and mortar. Where does that stand right now?

Cass Talbott: We don’t know. We’re currently looking for a site and then once we find one, we will apply for a permit through the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission. And then that will presumably be approved and we can have a brick and mortar, where we can also have a little bit easier access to ATMs and cash payment – because the cash flow also is a big thing. What Kris didn’t mention is that under that bridge, we’re handing out cash from a fanny pack currently.

Miller: Because you’re not doing the EBT or the card form of redemption from the bags. This is all hand count and all cash.

Cass Talbott: Right.

Miller: Is that going to change?

Cass Talbott: Maybe long-term, we would have some kind of a card system for those who are interested, but we always want to retain cash payments.

Miller: How are you imagining responding to the public, whether it’s residential concerns or business concerns, when you transition from under a bridge to some kind of brick and mortar permanent site. What do you imagine those conversations are going to be like?

Cass Talbott: That’s a great question. I mean, certainly there are a lot of people who don’t want a depot in their neighborhood. We have a really strong coalition behind us that is going to be sitting by our side to facilitate these conversations. Our hope is that by presenting the data on our customers, by really showing people who Ground Score is and what The People’s Depot is, that people will come around to welcoming us in the community, because we also provide a lot of other benefits. We keep the area clean, we really work with the community to hold itself accountable, on a lot of those levels. So our hope is that we’ll be welcomed with open arms, but we’ll see where those conversations take us.

Miller: OK, so that’s the brick and mortar. What are the plans for the mobile?

Cass Talbott: Yeah, according to the bill, after a year, then mobile options can become available. So that is something that we’ve certainly been in conversations with the funders, with the retailers and with the distributors that work in Beverage Recycling Cooperative, around what could that look like for us. And so maybe it’s, at different places, we serve one location one day a week and have mobile redemptions around the city, to really make sure that that convenience remains within the system.

Miller: In your conversations about this, how much did you hear from other cities? I mean, Portland is not named by name in the bill, but it’s named in effect. We’re the only city in the state that’s above 500,000 people. But Eugene has an alternative redemption site. We did a show from there a year-and-a-half ago or so. Every city in Oregon is dealing with some version of redemption, it seems. So how much did you hear about other cities?

Cass Talbott: Not too much. I mean, certainly Representative Pam Marsh, who did oppose this bill because of her constituents in the Ashland area … but for really good reasons, right? She wanted to make sure that access was maintained in rural areas in particular. And my hope is that, again, we will be able to come up with some alternative redemption solutions for those areas in the future as well. But other places, we haven’t really heard much. I think they’re just waiting to see what this looks like and then maybe a next phase of it would be able to expand this opportunity to other parts of the state.

Miller: Kris, the bill did pass overwhelmingly, 28 to 1 in the state Senate last month. Then 48 to 4 in the House about two weeks ago. Why do you think this was so popular?

Brown: I mean, I honestly couldn’t tell you. I know that everyone that we’ve shown the depot to, they love our model, like we treat people with respect. It’s an opportunity for informal workers to get into formal work. All of our TPD staff, they get paid decent wages, they get paid time off benefits. It’s an opportunity to change the situation that they’re in. And we need more opportunities like this, not just with The People’s Depot, but for low barrier work opportunities. Because if there’s anything that canners prove is that they want to work.

It’s not shown as work according to our society, these people are informal workers. But just coming from my own experience, you were working very hard for maybe $4 to $5 an hour. That’s what the average canner makes when he’s out there collecting bottles and cans, plus the redemption process. So, I think this showed overwhelming support because we are showing success within our work program. We have shown success in that we can be part of the recycling system. And we’ve shown success in being part of the community. We’re just not a recycling program, we’re a work program. We like to share our space with other nonprofits and other service providers. We like to share our space and we want to be part of the community.

Miller: Kris Brown and Taylor Cass Talbott, thanks very much.

Cass Talbott: Thank you so much.

Brown: Thank you.

Miller: Kris Brown is the operational manager for The People’s Depot. It is run by the nonprofit Ground Score Association. Taylor Cass Talbott is a co-founder and co-executive director of the nonprofit.

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