A Pacific Northwest-based recycling company will offer Portland metro area and Southwest Washington residents complimentary public pick-up for campaign signs starting Nov. 15.
Ridwell, which collects hard-to-recycle items that traditional city trash and recycling haulers don’t process, will pick up election-related campaign yard signs to help reduce landfill waste and give items a second life. The company will pick up plastic campaign yard signs, business yard signs, stretchy plastic signs, damaged plastic yard signs and metal “H” frame stakes.
FILE - Ridwell driver Jason Glass drives around Southeast Portland collecting items to recycle on April 15, 2024. Ridwell is offering to recycle campaign signs across the greater Portland region, and people don't have to be paying members to arrange a pickup.
Monica Samayoa / OPB
“What we’re doing with this initiative is just taking the guess work out of responsibly recycling your plastic signs and we’re connecting the local community as well as our members with specialty recyclers who can give them a second life,” Ridwell’s Regional Director Taylor Loewen said.
Loewen said any resident, whether a member or not, can go on their website to find out their specific date for pickup based on the area they live, and register for pickup.
The company will pick up the items starting on America Recycles Day, on Nov. 15, through early December. There will be a limit of three yard signs per household.
Ridwell, which has 25,000 members in the Portland metro area, says it has so far diverted more than 6.6 million pounds from the waste stream since services began in November 2020.
Loewen estimated tens of millions of plastic campaign yard signs were manufactured this highly active election year. She said almost none of them get recycled properly.
That’s because the kinds of materials used to make them are hard to break down into raw materials and most don’t make it to the recycling bin.
In 2022, Oregonians generated more than 6 million tons of waste, where 3.6 million tons went into landfills or incinerators and about 2.4 million tons of materials were recovered, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Of those materials recovered, nearly 30,000 tons of rigid plastics containers were recycled.
DEQ is currently working on rolling out a new state-wide recycling system that aims to make it easier for the public to recycle by expanding services, upgrading sorting facilities and creating environmental benefits while reducing harm. The state will also require producers and manufacturers of packaged items like plastic containers and paper products to pay for the improvements.
Ridwell is hoping to fill the gap for those hard-to-recycle items by working with recycling specialists in the region.
For the campaign signs, the company will work with two specialty recyclers in the region — Merlin Plastics and Trex.
Merlin Plastics shreds campaign signs into pellets and creates a post-consumer resin, turning plastic that has already been recycled and repurposed into nursery potting plans or piping.
Trex recycles plastic film into composite lumber, which many people use for their backyard decks.
For the metal “H” frames, Ridwell will work with Bob’s Metals, which specializes in processing scrap metals.
Two years ago, Loewen said, the company started recycling campaign signs, and prevented more than 10,000 pounds of waste from going to landfills. She said this year the company expects to make an even bigger impact.
“So just really thinking about like small moves by individuals and what that collective impact can look like at scale is really incredible,” she said.