Thompson: Grocery stores are blocking bottle returns on their own

##Steve Bagwell/News-Register

By BRAD THOMPSON

Retired journalism professor

My effort to redeem six months’ worth of accumulated cans and bottles was thwarted recently.

If you have tried to cash in your bottles, you’ll understand this COVID-related problem. I am going to take you on a journey through state bureaucracy to explore why and offer a possible solution.

As you may have noticed, no facilities in McMinnville are open for can and bottle redemption. All four major grocery stores —  Albertsons, Roth’s, Safeway and WinCo — have shut their redemption centers. And driving to a BottleDrop redemption facility is prohibitive.

When I have asked workers and managers at local grocery stores why they are closed, I got different answers.

Some told me it was due to an order from the Yamhill County Public Health, so I called. No, officials there said. It’s not their doing.

The congenial health department person I talked to said perhaps it was a state Department of Agriculture rule, as the agency’s food safety unit oversees grocery stores. I e-mailed the unit, and within a couple of hours, got a reply from a nice guy suggesting I call him because the answer could be complicated.

I called and we had a friendly chat. He said he would check with his McMinnville region staffer.

A day later, he e-mailed to say his department wasn’t responsible. He suggested I look to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which oversees bottle bill redemption.

I went to the OLCC website, where I discovered that — yes, indeed, — the liquor agency oversees redemptions. None of the grocery store representatives told me that.

The website had a page devoted to which counties are mandated to have stores continue recycling cans and bottles and which are not, based on their COVID risk levels. Stores in the 18 counties at low or moderate risk must keep their return centers open.

In a Dec. 3 news release, the OLCC said it was temporarily waiving that requirement for counties at high and extreme risk — a category currently covering the other 18 counties, including Yamhill. The agency indicated it was allowing them to forgo accepting bottles and cans, but not requiring them to.

In other words, it’s entirely up to those stores whether to make their reverse vending machines available. And the stores in McMinnville have chosen not to serve their customers at this juncture.

I think I understand why, which I will get to.

I e-mailed the OLCC in case I had missed something. When I heard back, the representative person first said the agency was simply following Oregon Health Authority guidance. I asked to be directed to that guidance, and in response was advised the agency actually was following its own guidances, not relying on the OHA.

A note on the OLCC webpage makes clear that stores are not mandated to close their facilities under this “guidance.” Here’s the text:

“Retailers that choose to do so can still accept containers for redemption; there is no mandate that retailers not refuse containers. Even if stores choose not to accept container returns at this time, a 10 cent deposit will still be assessed on the purchase of all eligible beverage containers.”

Bingo! Our grocery store facilities are closed, but not because of the OLCC.

I tried to show one manager this after she insisted her store was under state order to close its redemption facility, but she barely glanced at the OLCC website open on my phone. She then told me it was actually an Oregon Occupational Safety and Health rule, which an employee at the other store seconded.

I could find no such rule on the state OSHA site. But I did find the agency’s latest 54-page COVID regulation — “COVID-19 Public Health Emergency in All Oregon Workplaces, 437-001-0744 Rule Addressing COVID-19 Workplace Risks.”

Appendix 2 of that regulation references retail stores. But it addresses only physical distancing and signage.

Physical distancing limits the number of customers so workers and the public can maintain safe distances. But this is not a mandate to close; it is a requirement that stores protect workers and customers by mandating distancing, which they were already doing.

Both Albertsons and Safeway maintain return locations inside their stores. So anyone walking through the store would be no more or less protected than ordinary shoppers and clerks.

Perhaps the size of the recycling rooms matters. It would be a simple matter then to limit the number of people allowed in the room at any one time. Safe distancing self-enforcement seems to work elsewhere in other parts of the stores, with the help of floor decals.

The bottle return at WinCo is located in an open-air breezeway, so even less in need of regulation. And the reverse vending machines at Roth’s are completely in the open, outside the store.

The latest Centers for Disease Control guidance is that people need not even wear masks outdoors. So why are Roth’s machines turned off? After all, these are the safest facilities in McMinnville.

And indeed, Roth’s posts the OLCC notice on its machines, thereby acknowledging that closing them is a decision it has made on its own, not a state mandate. It’s almost as if the stores jointly agreed to take advantage of an enforcement reprieve in order to shut these operations.

It seems that given an excuse to close their redemption facilities, our local grocery stores will. That saves them money, as they don’t have to use staff time to clear jams, unload the recyclables and conduct cleanups.

Clearly, closing during COVID is not a state-required action. The stores need to stop blaming state agencies. They need to come clean and acknowledge they chose on their own to close their redemption facilities.

I get it. These rooms in stores are sometimes messy with sticky floors and the stale beer odor of a frat house after a weekend bacchanal. They scream low scale when the stores are trying to project an upscale aura. And homeless people pushing overflowing carts of bottles and cans down the aisle can be a turnoff for shoppers.

But it should not be lost on the stores that their regular shoppers also return cans and bottles. Closing the redemption facilities is not customer-friendly.

Is there a solution? Perhaps.

The OLCC also oversees a network of BottleDrop redemption centers in Oregon, and they remain open.

These centers are not located in stores, rather standalone locations. But the ones nearest to McMinnville are in Salem, Tigard and Forest Grove, all 20 to 25 miles away.

The state needs to locate a BottleDrop Redemption Center in McMinnville, and not just because of COVID. A local center would benefit both the public and the grocery stores that find redemption of bottles and cans burdensome.

Before retiring, Brad Thompson taught journalism and chaired the journalism department at Linfield University. Earlier in his career, he worked as a reporter and editor at the Rocky Mountain News. He holds a B.A. from the University of Denver, M.A. from the University of Missouri and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado.