Oregon is on track to become the first state to launch a recycling program that holds businesses financially accountable for the packaging waste they produce.
Environmental regulators have completed administrative rules behind the program that rolls out in July, including what materials will be accepted in recycling bins across the state and how much producers need to pay based on the environmental impacts of their packaging.
Oregon is among a handful of states that aim to mirror recycling programs that have existed in Canada and the European Union for decades. Others are California, Colorado, Minnesota and Maine. They’ll be looking to lessons Oregon learns as its program gets off the ground this summer.
Many of these programs are responses to a global recycling disruption that began in 2017, when China — the world’s largest importer of recyclables — stopped accepting several types of waste, including plastics, due to high levels of contamination.
“Those global disruptions really revealed to people the world of recycling beyond just putting your items in a bin,” said Nicole Portley, who’s leading Oregon’s recycling changes for the Department of Environmental Quality. “We learned that much of American waste was going abroad, and some of it was being released directly into the environment.”
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Oregon lawmakers responded by passing the Plastic Pollution and Recycling Modernization Act in 2021. It requires large businesses that sell or distribute paper, packaging or food serviceware in Oregon to register as a Producer Responsibility Organization and pay membership fees. Similar organizations exist for paint, electronics, medication and mattresses.
The law applies to both local and out-of-state businesses with global revenues of $5 million or more. It won’t apply to materials exported out of the state.
DEQ regulators don’t expect these changes to have significant impacts on grocery or retail prices in Oregon, based on trends observed in Canada.
“The top 100 companies, as we understand from Canada, bear about 90% of the program costs in places like Ontario,” Portley said, adding that global companies selling their products across the U.S. are likely to distribute the extra expense throughout their business.
FILE: In June 2020, Hillsboro Far West Recycling workers look for plastic bags and plastics wraps in recycled materials to avoid jamming the sorting machine and delaying work. Oregon's new recycling program that launches in July 2025 will create a network of drop-off sites where people can take hard-to-recycle materials like plastic bags.
Monica Samayoa / OPB
New rules lay out key details, like livable wages at sorting facilities
After lawmakers passed the new recycling law, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality set out to create administrative rules to iron out the finer details of how it’ll work.
The agency went about it in two phases, completing its first set of rules last year and its second in late November.
First, DEQ created two recyclables lists: one for curbside recycling, and one for collection sites where Oregonians can drop off hard-to-recycle materials, like aluminum foil and plastic bags.
The most recent rulemaking process established fees that businesses need to pay based on the packaging they produce. The more environmentally harmful their products are, the higher fees they have to pay. Similarly, if they make changes like moving away from hard-to-recycle plastics, then they could pay lower fees.
The second rulemaking also established wages for people working at the 10 sorting facilities around the state. The statue requires they be paid a livable wage. DEQ used the MIT Living Wage Calculator to set those wages at $25 to $32 per hour, depending on where the facility is located.
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Oregonians will start to see some changes in July
Although the new program hits the ground this summer, it won’t be fully running until 2028. The types of changes Oregonians see during that three-year rollout process depends on where they’re located.
The law requires cities and counties with more than 4,000 residents to offer curbside recycling. Smaller towns can decide if they want to participate or not. Those services will be funded by the fees that producers pay into the program.
Although cities and counties will continue to manage their own franchise agreements with haulers, they will need to accept the same recyclables on the state’s collections list. That means people living in Medford or Ontario will be able to recycle the same things as people in Bend or Portland.
FILE: A mixed recycling container.
Allison Frost / OPB
This collections list could change over time, as Oregon regulators consider the environmental impacts of different materials. For instance, plastic clamshells that are typically used for takeout or for packaging fresh fruit at grocers aren’t currently on the state’s collections list. That’s because recycling clamshells doesn’t meet the state’s ecological or economic standards.
“The process for recycling them is quite water-intensive and a lot of the current capacity is located in Mexico, so we have concerns about the ability of those facilities to meet Oregon’s responsible standard,” Portley said.
Some producers are trying to make the case that the state should accept this ubiquitous and inexpensive type of packaging. They’ll have to undergo an application process and demonstrate that these materials can be recycled in a less environmentally harmful way, and that there are end-markets investing in the resulting raw material.
