10 cents by 10 cents, old cans are Audrey Ebramsyah’s gas money.
The senior has been recycling cans and bottles at the Oregon Bottle Redemption Centers for five years, turning an average profit of $10 a week.
“It’s not big money, but it’s basically free,” she said.
The Oregon Bottle Redemption Centers were founded in 1971, establishing a 10 cent tax on most cans and bottles which can be recouped at a bottle return center (Oregon.gov). OBCR offers several ways to participate.
The most common is hand- counting bottles, meaning a person can walk in with no account and hand- place each bottle into their counting machines. It does get sticky, though. If that’s too time consuming, OBCR also offers Green bag accounts. People who register for the Green Bags simply drop off their bag at a redemption center with their personal code, and the funds will be transferred into their bottle drop account (Oregon.gov). Though Jesuit is just 1,000 feet from a redemption center, almost no students take advantage of the service.
Ebramsyah has been trying to encourage classmates to use OBCR for the last year to varying success.
“I think it’s the barrier of effort for most people. I mean, we have those recycling cans specifically for cans and bottles, and people have the option of not recycling there and getting their money back, but they choose not to.”
Certainly students have the option to recycle their own cans, but if it’s too much effort to ferry them back and forth, perhaps Jesuit should have an option to take advantage of the bottle deposit on campus. Sustainability director, Jennifer Kuenz, has a plan for just that.
After being contacted by a student over the summer, Ms. Kuenz was prompted to ask the Jesuit CFO if it would be possible to open a bottle drop account, and in great news, Jesuit now plans to open a non-profit account that can be accessed by all Jesuit students. Non-profit bottle drop accounts operate in a similar way to the Green Bag account. Except, rather than receiving the deposit into a personal account, the bags are marked with a sticker linked to a charitable fund. In this case, Jesuit. Soon, students and their families will be able to collect Blue bags from Jesuit and collect cans and bottles from home.
Jesuit’s Green Team has taken on the role of workshopping the initiative, and adapting it to their current schedule.
“We’ve got really good leadership in the Green Team,” Kuenz said. “There’s definitely new ideas on how to repurpose and reuse.”
However, Jesuit’s new bottle drop program isn’t just about fundraising.
“It can be really frustrating to see how disconnected our campus can be from the area around it,” Ebramsyah said. “I think it’ll be good for students here to use public services like Bottle drop and start to engage more with the broader community.”
As the 2023-2024 academic year begins to unfold, students should keep an eye out for developing sustainability initiatives, and keep in touch with the student-led Green Team, meeting on Thursdays during Flex.
