Oregon Bottle Deposit

Oregon has made me quit drinking soda and water.

I'm officially a one year native of Oregon on New Years Day. Only a few things bug me about this state.

1. The roads suck--They're loud, too slow of speed limit, they never built a freeway to Boise, and the city planning is terrible. One way streets are not parallel and often dead end and resume with the same name four blocks later.

1.5--Sidewalks and walking paths would be nice...

2. The grand annoyance however is bottle deposits. The people in Oregon always kill a live Christmas tree to put in their living rooms, but cans/bottles etc are so endangered they pay extra money for the privilege.

When I was a kid, I started noticing the $.05 labels on drinks and thought--"Gee if I only lived in Oregon, I'd get $.05 for every can I collected and could get rich!" That's not how the low works. When you choose to purchase a marked beverage, you are charged a $.05 deposit (IT SHOULD REALLY BE CALLED A TAX BECAUSE I DON'T EARN INTEREST FROM IT). When you chose to return the can to a store that has recyclable machines, you get that $.05 back.

Okay, that doesn't sound so bad, but it is and here's why.

I praise Oregon for giving me a huge recycle bin dumpster at my home that is picked up every two weeks. My husband complains that he has to sort the trash, but I have no problem with it. I'm the one who cleans and takes out the trash. His argument is null and void. The cans can be put in there, but then I'm throwing away my $.05.

To get my $.05 back, I must take it to a machine to be counted. The machine then gives me a receipt to take inside to redeem for money. I admit, that still doesn't sound too bad. The bad part is the reality. The machines are usually broken, full of dirt, scum and whatever else, reject every other can because it wants to and are completely gross. Cans, bottles or whatever always have at least one drop left in them and that gets gross and sticky on you when you're putting them in the stupid machine. I'm the type to consolidate errands anyway, so to first dump in the 3 bags of soda cans I've collected in my garage and then go in and spend my $4.55 from the cans doesn't really work because my hands are too sticky to even hand over the $4.55 receipt.
To make it all better--on my anniversary of moving to this state, they're going to start charging this same $.05 deposit on bottled water. That's one more beverage I won't be buying except in Idaho.

From what I've read, Oregon was the first state to come up with a bottle bill in the 1970s. The purpose was to help eliminate trash on the roadsides. Trash is considerably less than it was and I salute the vision of this. I think it's completely awesome how they fixed the problem. However, the need for this has come and gone. Let me buy a 12 pack of Dr Pepper or water without charging me an extra $.60. (The average price is usually $4.00 because we're so far from a supplier.) I promise to put the cans in my home recycle bin the same way I put my daily newspaper in the bin.