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It is my understanding that cans bought in Washington are rejected by Oregon recycling machines, and you can't get the 10 cents. It has been years since I tried it, but my sister had the same experience. —Kate M.
Several readers called bullshit on my recent bottle-redemption column (Dr. Know, WW, Aug. 14, 2019), in which I discussed Oregon's rising tide of interstate bottle fraud, and the law recently signed by Gov. Kate Brown to combat it.
These readers all agreed that recycling-center machines can tell if a bottle was purchased out of state—there's a special code on it—so the fraud I described couldn't actually happen.
Yeah…that seems unlikely. The Oregon Legislature, God knows, isn't the world's most with-it deliberative body, but it strains credulity to imagine a bottle-fraud bill could make it by the Senate, House and governor's desk without anyone ever speaking up about the "special code," if there were one.
The Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative didn't know anything about a code, either. Either there isn't one, or the technology needed to read it has been lost to history, like the secret of Damascus steel.
And yet! Most (OK, two out of three) of these readers had specific stories about attempting this con themselves, decades ago, only to get shot down by Bottle Room Kevin. I myself remember vaguely "knowing" in those days that Washington bottles couldn't be redeemed here.
Was Oregon the inadvertent (or even deliberate!) beneficiary of an urban legend that kept would-be fraudsters at bay? Or was 1971 just a time when a lot fewer people needed to return bottles as a means of livelihood?
Tickets for "That's Edutainment!" Dr. Know's TED-talk-on-acid-plus-sketch-comedy gala—Saturday, Sept. 7, at Alberta Rose Theatre—are going fast. Get 'em at doctorknow.live/tickets.