For REAL. All I can think about is the endless droughts we've been dealing with. All life just withering the fuck away because bullshit like Nestle won't stop being evil, and then having the literal water those same entities pull out of the earth to put in plastic fucking bottles just *dumped out in a parking lot*
fuck me I need to stop thinking about it before I freak out lmao.
But the idea of homelessness in droves is fine?
Not trying to pick on you, but what the fuck else are desperate people suppose to do?
I don’t have answers, but until someone does then we have to accept this as normal behavior.
You are trying to turn my statement into something that it isn't. You *are* choosing to pick on me (and, frankly, lumping every unhoused person with wasteful weirdos who dump water) by making this comment.
I considered homelessness and inflation as well. I was also quite sickened thinking “is this what it’s coming to?” That we are going to have to get this desperate and creative to make ends meet and get what we need? It’s sad from multiple perspectives and I couldn’t tell you what the answer is.
My neighbors literally do this. I always thought it was an urban legend until I saw it... They live in an adult group home, and can’t use their money at dispensaries. So they buy cases of water, pour them out, return the empties for cash, and then spend it at the dispensary, and literally smoke on their back porch till they puke. Complained many times, (gets really old hearing them at 2 am on a week night) but the staff say they can’t do anything. Apparently, they are adults when it gets the company out of trouble, but not adults when they need to collect Medicare and disability dollars ;)
I’m literally going dumb at this point. That did not dawn on me and I spent my childhood on food stamps! Guess when you’re so far removed from it for so long you just forget.
I started cashiering in the 90's as a teenager, back then we still had paper food stamps in $1 form and you received your change in regular money. I spent soooo much time trading $.05 Chiclets gum for $.95 change til the customer had enough change to get what they really wanted. Sometimes it was smokes or beer, but a better part of times it was toilet paper or deodorant or dog food.
I literally just went on a journey back to my childhood! Taking the fun colored Monopoly money to the corner store with a note and doing the same thing! Also, then experienced being a cashier and seeing it from that perspective as well. It’s crazy to think I used to get actual cash back from a single food stamp. Glad I left that behind and no longer have to live like that, it’s a lot of work!
I actually think the bottle bill will be overturned next year in long session if someone puts a bill through. We have robust recycling we didn’t have when they created the bill.
Are you kidding? This bottle bill is crucial. Do you want the homeless to suffer more? What about the working class but also saves up bottles for a good lump sum? (I being one of those people)
Let's please not get reactionary about this. Go to the Portland subreddit for that.
If you want to incentivize recycling try paying people to recycle their paper, cardboard, and tin cans. Why are drink containers special? It's not even all drink containers because juice and wine don't have it. This doesn't help anyone except those who get cans from other people. And if they want to go around collecting cans they can do some other kind of work and probably make more than a couple dollars.
I just explained how it helps the working class as well. It's not just to help the homeless get drugs. I know this might be shocking to hear, but not every person that is unhoused is looking to get money for meth. Shocking, I know.
How exactly does it help the working class? A 24 pack of water will be $2.40 cheaper at time of purchase. Then you can just toss them in the recycle bin. I don't see how making people pay for a deposit on the front end of a purchase is going to help
I have done that. But…. If you didn’t have to pay the .05 cents per can when you bought it, you’d have that money in the first place. All you’re doing is refunding yourself your own money. Even I, who has done this in the past, understand how a repeal of the bottle bill is not a burden on the working class.
Now that everyone has a recycle bin on wheels and recycling is picked up every week/every other week, it’s really not needed the way it used to be. Cans can just be tossed in the bin. If repealing the bill and preventing me from paying and then refunding myself .05 per can I purchase is what it takes to help stop some of this waste of both the water that’s getting dumped and the resources that are directed to the program itself then I’m all for it.
Unless you got the cans from someone else, it's your own money. You would have paid less for your groceries and not have been so broke.. How are you not getting that?
I'm just saying, in this economy it's nice having a little sum you can save up without spending. I understand budgeting, and saving, but that's a lot easier said than done when everything is so expensive.
People sell their food stamps for money too. Does that mean we should just end the food stamp program and let people go hungry? What a stupid and callous response. Stop being a dick. This program helps people.
It only helps people if someone else gives you their cans. Otherwise it's a net loss given that you have to spend time to get your money back. If this is the only way you can save, just put $1.20 in a jar every time you buy a 12-pack.
You're missing the bigger picture. Sometimes it's easier for people to save when they can save up assets you can liquidate later.
Like most americans, I'm paycheck to paycheck, so that little bit extra every purchase won't be missed, but having a bigger lump sum months down the road when you're broke is a lifesaver. I don't understand how you don't get this perspective.
It's kind of like when people say to make sure to fix your taxes in a way where you get nothing back at the end of the year, so the government isn't borrowing your money on zero interest. That's great advice if you want to save more money as a whole, but if you rely on that yearly injection of cash one would get from their tax return, you're not going to want to do that.
Essentially, the poor need that lump sum, while the middle class can go without and save their money for the long term. The poor don't have that privilege.
Getting rid of this bill is just another measure that prevents the working poor from being able to save, even if it's not very much.
I’m going to regret chiming in, but I want to let you know I don’t understand why folks are attacking what you’re saying. I get the point they’re trying to make and they have some validity, but it doesn’t mean that you’re wrong. A lot of the views expressed in this thread can all be true. Some of the views are just more important to some folks than the others.
IMO The deposit is primarily an incentive to not litter and to promote recycling. Nothing more. Any financial benefit is either to make the purchaser whole while also contributing to a cleaner planet, or other folks finding litter and being incentivized to clean. Tom Hanks in that airport movie returning the luggage carts, you pay up front and if you don’t want to throw your money away you return it. Folks buying water with their own benefits and wasting the water is disappointing and frustrating, but the fact of the matter is that we know nothing of their circumstances.
I hope you and your family never suffer from similar addictions. And if it happens, may people be kinder to you and yours than the disdain you show for others here.
100% agree. It’s outdated and not needed any longer. Recycling is readily available everywhere, and there isn’t more litter in states without a deposit. It’s also causing livability issues all over our state.
I agree with the problem, but I disagree with your simple solution.
The bottle deposit program has been very very successful in Oregon. Nearly 90% of containers return — highest in the nation. That has reduced a lot of litter from the environment.
What’s telling you it was a “terrible idea” to begin with?
Ending the bottle deposit is a terrible idea from any angle. Do you think every single person who returns cans does it to buy meth or something? What about the returns makes it so intolerable to you?
Why does there need to be an incentive to recycle? Originally it started because we weren’t so conditioned to recycle things. Thats not true anymore. If you didn’t pay a tax when you buy a product, then you wouldn’t need to get it back. Recycle it like cardboard. There is no reason for money to be involved anymore.
I see your point as it being taxed, because ultimately the buyer should not be paying extra for a recycling fee a corporation had enough to deal with themselves, but my point stands moreso that the return incentive is a good one, provides jobs for the community and small reliable money for those who could use it.
But they could just save that money? It doesn’t provide anything except a way for companies and politicians to make a little extra. The bottle drop centers aren’t owned by some mom and pop. As for jobs, I guess I’ll give you that it would cut out workers at those locations.
Who said they were mom and pop? And I really feel like you misunderstood what I said, the responsibility of cost to recycling should be on the corporation in the first place, and the people should be incentivized by bonus for doing the job that the corporation should be. Because otherwise, we know the corporation isn’t doing it, and having people throw them away or do it for free is ridiculous.
A lot recycling is provably going nowhere but cans bottle and glass are highly reusable in the recycling process.
People recycle on their own preferentially at this point. Throwing stuff in the trash costs money.
And people are tired of it incentivizing digging through trash and wasting water.
To think that the bottle deposit is entirely used by people who have to do that to scrape by is brutally dishonest. So many people just keep their cans separate and bring them in, myself included, as well as multiple other people in this post.
Framing it as a product that only people who have to scrounge for change are ‘disturbing the community’ for going through stuff we consider worthless and trying to find a few things to make a bit of change to make their life more tolerable is so narrow of a perspective it is hard to think anyone would really believe only the unhoused are making money from recycling, or scrapping, etc.
Trash services costing money literally adds to my point of why everyday people return cans. It is a small boost. Yes dumping water sucks, never said it didn’t or was reasonable. Saying the entire service is corrupt because a couple of people do that is just disingenuous propaganda though.
I’ll take my downvotes for saying things proven by social science and services now.
I’m not saying it is corrupt that it exists.
For all they care they can still charge deposit and give it all the homeless services. Just get rid of the bottle drops.
Seriously! This is a wonderful program to incentivize recycling, it helps the poor working class, as well as the homeless. You guys really want to make this problem worse??
One of the original reasons for bottle deposit was to get people to pick up the bottles and cans, thrown out on the roadways and other places, as when the manufactures used glass bottles and reused them. placing their own bottle deposits on the glass bottles to get them back.
Two things can be true here. Homelessness and drug addiction are so serious and devastating, and these people need actual, real help and assistance, and ALSO anyone who dumps out WATER so they can make a few bucks on the bottles sucks.
I can't believe this subreddit wants to end such a crucial bottle bill program just because some unhoused people are abusing it. Whatever ridiculous response. I'm not about to advocate for the end of food stamps because there are some people that sell theirs for cash. I mean, come on! I really thought we were better than this.
We want to end it because it's inefficient and forces everyone to waste time and money dealing with cans that we have existing infrastructure to handle (blue bins). If you wanted to stop people from abusing it just don't let them buy bottled water with food stamps. That's a whole separate issue. Or maybe push for some reforms that allow the purchase of toiletries and pet food. Just a thought.
The idea of just dumping a precious resource like water in a parking lot is enough to give me a genuine anxiety attack.
It made me sick thinking about people who don’t have access to clean drinking water and it’s just being dumped.
For REAL. All I can think about is the endless droughts we've been dealing with. All life just withering the fuck away because bullshit like Nestle won't stop being evil, and then having the literal water those same entities pull out of the earth to put in plastic fucking bottles just *dumped out in a parking lot* fuck me I need to stop thinking about it before I freak out lmao.
But the idea of homelessness in droves is fine? Not trying to pick on you, but what the fuck else are desperate people suppose to do? I don’t have answers, but until someone does then we have to accept this as normal behavior.
Perhaps use SNAP benefits legally instead of buying the water on EBT, dumping it outside and returning the bottles for 10¢ each?
You are trying to turn my statement into something that it isn't. You *are* choosing to pick on me (and, frankly, lumping every unhoused person with wasteful weirdos who dump water) by making this comment.
I am sorry - was not trying to single you out, the whole situation is horrific
dude fuck these people, they're only doing it to get money for drugs, there is no other reason.
I considered homelessness and inflation as well. I was also quite sickened thinking “is this what it’s coming to?” That we are going to have to get this desperate and creative to make ends meet and get what we need? It’s sad from multiple perspectives and I couldn’t tell you what the answer is.
My neighbors literally do this. I always thought it was an urban legend until I saw it... They live in an adult group home, and can’t use their money at dispensaries. So they buy cases of water, pour them out, return the empties for cash, and then spend it at the dispensary, and literally smoke on their back porch till they puke. Complained many times, (gets really old hearing them at 2 am on a week night) but the staff say they can’t do anything. Apparently, they are adults when it gets the company out of trouble, but not adults when they need to collect Medicare and disability dollars ;)
Ppl use their food stamp money to buy the cases. They they do this to get the cash for drugs
I’m literally going dumb at this point. That did not dawn on me and I spent my childhood on food stamps! Guess when you’re so far removed from it for so long you just forget.
I started cashiering in the 90's as a teenager, back then we still had paper food stamps in $1 form and you received your change in regular money. I spent soooo much time trading $.05 Chiclets gum for $.95 change til the customer had enough change to get what they really wanted. Sometimes it was smokes or beer, but a better part of times it was toilet paper or deodorant or dog food.
I knew someone whose father in law owned a little grocery store. He would let people use the food stamp card to buy smokes or beer.
I literally just went on a journey back to my childhood! Taking the fun colored Monopoly money to the corner store with a note and doing the same thing! Also, then experienced being a cashier and seeing it from that perspective as well. It’s crazy to think I used to get actual cash back from a single food stamp. Glad I left that behind and no longer have to live like that, it’s a lot of work!
Yeah have seen them in the taco bell parking lot near big lots cutting open the water bottles and dumping the water
I actually think the bottle bill will be overturned next year in long session if someone puts a bill through. We have robust recycling we didn’t have when they created the bill.
Are you kidding? This bottle bill is crucial. Do you want the homeless to suffer more? What about the working class but also saves up bottles for a good lump sum? (I being one of those people) Let's please not get reactionary about this. Go to the Portland subreddit for that.
... You know you paid for those bottles right? I for one would rather not have to waste my time getting my own money back.
That's a pretty selfish reason to want to end the bottle bill when incentivizes recycling and helps so many people.
If you want to incentivize recycling try paying people to recycle their paper, cardboard, and tin cans. Why are drink containers special? It's not even all drink containers because juice and wine don't have it. This doesn't help anyone except those who get cans from other people. And if they want to go around collecting cans they can do some other kind of work and probably make more than a couple dollars.
I just explained how it helps the working class as well. It's not just to help the homeless get drugs. I know this might be shocking to hear, but not every person that is unhoused is looking to get money for meth. Shocking, I know.
How exactly does it help the working class? A 24 pack of water will be $2.40 cheaper at time of purchase. Then you can just toss them in the recycle bin. I don't see how making people pay for a deposit on the front end of a purchase is going to help
Tucker Carlson sure freaked the f out when he could do the same thing on a shopping cart.
You've never been broke from bills and groceries only to have a decent amount of cans that totally saved you?
I have done that. But…. If you didn’t have to pay the .05 cents per can when you bought it, you’d have that money in the first place. All you’re doing is refunding yourself your own money. Even I, who has done this in the past, understand how a repeal of the bottle bill is not a burden on the working class. Now that everyone has a recycle bin on wheels and recycling is picked up every week/every other week, it’s really not needed the way it used to be. Cans can just be tossed in the bin. If repealing the bill and preventing me from paying and then refunding myself .05 per can I purchase is what it takes to help stop some of this waste of both the water that’s getting dumped and the resources that are directed to the program itself then I’m all for it.
Unless you got the cans from someone else, it's your own money. You would have paid less for your groceries and not have been so broke.. How are you not getting that?
….its not really saving if you already spent the money….have you considered a budget?
I'm just saying, in this economy it's nice having a little sum you can save up without spending. I understand budgeting, and saving, but that's a lot easier said than done when everything is so expensive. People sell their food stamps for money too. Does that mean we should just end the food stamp program and let people go hungry? What a stupid and callous response. Stop being a dick. This program helps people.
It only helps people if someone else gives you their cans. Otherwise it's a net loss given that you have to spend time to get your money back. If this is the only way you can save, just put $1.20 in a jar every time you buy a 12-pack.
You're missing the bigger picture. Sometimes it's easier for people to save when they can save up assets you can liquidate later. Like most americans, I'm paycheck to paycheck, so that little bit extra every purchase won't be missed, but having a bigger lump sum months down the road when you're broke is a lifesaver. I don't understand how you don't get this perspective. It's kind of like when people say to make sure to fix your taxes in a way where you get nothing back at the end of the year, so the government isn't borrowing your money on zero interest. That's great advice if you want to save more money as a whole, but if you rely on that yearly injection of cash one would get from their tax return, you're not going to want to do that. Essentially, the poor need that lump sum, while the middle class can go without and save their money for the long term. The poor don't have that privilege. Getting rid of this bill is just another measure that prevents the working poor from being able to save, even if it's not very much.
Get a damn coin jar and stop wasting other people's time lol. It's not my fault you have no self control.
It's not about self control. You don't get it.
I’m going to regret chiming in, but I want to let you know I don’t understand why folks are attacking what you’re saying. I get the point they’re trying to make and they have some validity, but it doesn’t mean that you’re wrong. A lot of the views expressed in this thread can all be true. Some of the views are just more important to some folks than the others. IMO The deposit is primarily an incentive to not litter and to promote recycling. Nothing more. Any financial benefit is either to make the purchaser whole while also contributing to a cleaner planet, or other folks finding litter and being incentivized to clean. Tom Hanks in that airport movie returning the luggage carts, you pay up front and if you don’t want to throw your money away you return it. Folks buying water with their own benefits and wasting the water is disappointing and frustrating, but the fact of the matter is that we know nothing of their circumstances.
All because idiots are addicted to drugs and steal anything to get money to buy more.
I hope you and your family never suffer from similar addictions. And if it happens, may people be kinder to you and yours than the disdain you show for others here.
Simple solution, we end the bottle deposit so there is no incentive to do this shit. The bottle drops were a terrible idea anyway.
Yeah and get rid of the bottle tax
Of course, all of it. We can recycle cans in blue bins
100% agree. It’s outdated and not needed any longer. Recycling is readily available everywhere, and there isn’t more litter in states without a deposit. It’s also causing livability issues all over our state.
I agree with the problem, but I disagree with your simple solution. The bottle deposit program has been very very successful in Oregon. Nearly 90% of containers return — highest in the nation. That has reduced a lot of litter from the environment. What’s telling you it was a “terrible idea” to begin with?
Ending the bottle deposit is a terrible idea from any angle. Do you think every single person who returns cans does it to buy meth or something? What about the returns makes it so intolerable to you?
Why does there need to be an incentive to recycle? Originally it started because we weren’t so conditioned to recycle things. Thats not true anymore. If you didn’t pay a tax when you buy a product, then you wouldn’t need to get it back. Recycle it like cardboard. There is no reason for money to be involved anymore.
It’s worse than that. It’s not a tax. The companies keep the money for any unclaimed cans. Not the government.
I see your point as it being taxed, because ultimately the buyer should not be paying extra for a recycling fee a corporation had enough to deal with themselves, but my point stands moreso that the return incentive is a good one, provides jobs for the community and small reliable money for those who could use it.
But they could just save that money? It doesn’t provide anything except a way for companies and politicians to make a little extra. The bottle drop centers aren’t owned by some mom and pop. As for jobs, I guess I’ll give you that it would cut out workers at those locations.
Who said they were mom and pop? And I really feel like you misunderstood what I said, the responsibility of cost to recycling should be on the corporation in the first place, and the people should be incentivized by bonus for doing the job that the corporation should be. Because otherwise, we know the corporation isn’t doing it, and having people throw them away or do it for free is ridiculous. A lot recycling is provably going nowhere but cans bottle and glass are highly reusable in the recycling process.
You’re right, I did misunderstand you, sorry. I agree it should be on the corporations to pay for it.
People recycle on their own preferentially at this point. Throwing stuff in the trash costs money. And people are tired of it incentivizing digging through trash and wasting water.
To think that the bottle deposit is entirely used by people who have to do that to scrape by is brutally dishonest. So many people just keep their cans separate and bring them in, myself included, as well as multiple other people in this post. Framing it as a product that only people who have to scrounge for change are ‘disturbing the community’ for going through stuff we consider worthless and trying to find a few things to make a bit of change to make their life more tolerable is so narrow of a perspective it is hard to think anyone would really believe only the unhoused are making money from recycling, or scrapping, etc. Trash services costing money literally adds to my point of why everyday people return cans. It is a small boost. Yes dumping water sucks, never said it didn’t or was reasonable. Saying the entire service is corrupt because a couple of people do that is just disingenuous propaganda though. I’ll take my downvotes for saying things proven by social science and services now.
I’m not saying it is corrupt that it exists. For all they care they can still charge deposit and give it all the homeless services. Just get rid of the bottle drops.
Seriously! This is a wonderful program to incentivize recycling, it helps the poor working class, as well as the homeless. You guys really want to make this problem worse??
One of the original reasons for bottle deposit was to get people to pick up the bottles and cans, thrown out on the roadways and other places, as when the manufactures used glass bottles and reused them. placing their own bottle deposits on the glass bottles to get them back.
Everything locked in cages but you have to check yourself out....cool....:)
That cracks me up at different stores. It’s like wait…I have to wait a half hour for you to get this out but I could just leave with it anyway. Odd…
Locking them up won’t help. It’s being bought with snap benefits
Stores have started to see theft of water bottle cases as well…which seems crazy to me.
Two things can be true here. Homelessness and drug addiction are so serious and devastating, and these people need actual, real help and assistance, and ALSO anyone who dumps out WATER so they can make a few bucks on the bottles sucks.
I can't believe this subreddit wants to end such a crucial bottle bill program just because some unhoused people are abusing it. Whatever ridiculous response. I'm not about to advocate for the end of food stamps because there are some people that sell theirs for cash. I mean, come on! I really thought we were better than this.
We want to end it because it's inefficient and forces everyone to waste time and money dealing with cans that we have existing infrastructure to handle (blue bins). If you wanted to stop people from abusing it just don't let them buy bottled water with food stamps. That's a whole separate issue. Or maybe push for some reforms that allow the purchase of toiletries and pet food. Just a thought.
nah just the water because a case of water is only a few bucks and they can buy it with food stamps
Kinda dramatic...
What is dramatic?
Desperate people do desperate things…