Another thing 'Starting January 1, 2009'

Beginning Jan. 1, Oregon’s Bottle Bill will expand to include water and flavored water containers. That means that, in addition to those plastic water and flavored water containers, beer and malt beverages, soda, mineral water, and carbonated soft drinks will all be redeemable for a 5 cent deposit. Be sure to look for the “OR 5¢ deposit” on the label.

The original Bottle Bill was passed in 1971 - Oregon’s bottle bill was the first of its kind in the nation. The Bottle Bill set the stage for easy environmental solutions we now take for granted, like curbside recycling. Thirty seven years later, the bottle bill is still doing its job. Now, hopefully it will begin to keep plastic water bottles out of the landfill, and put them into the recyclate stream.

• Since 1971, the amount of beverage containers in litter along Oregon roadsides has dropped from 40 percent to 6 percent.
• Recycled beverage containers are used to make hundreds of products including fleece jackets, carpeting, baseball bats, license plates, and insulation as well as new beverage containers.
• Recycling a ton of plastic bottles saves approximately 3.8 barrels of oil.
• Recycling one pound of PET (polyethylene terphthalate) plastic bottles saves approximately 12,000 BTUs of energy.
• Using recycled materials uses 2/3 less energy than using raw materials.

Keep recycling!