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This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.
Owens Brockway, the glass company that operates a recycling and manufacturing facility in Northeast Portland, announced this morning it will lay off 90 workers and close its bottle manufacturing line.
That’s bad news for the state’s wobbly economy and tough for a company that is crucial to Oregon’s iconic Bottle Bill. (Owens Brockway is part of O-I Glass Inc., formerly Owens Illinois Inc., a large, publicly traded manufacturer based in Perrysburg, Ohio.)
The Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative manages the Bottle Bill for the state. Last year, OBRC collected and recycled more than 2 billion containers, collecting returnable glass bottles from Ashland to Ontario and everywhere in between and bringing them to Portland for recycling.
Although glass is the smallest component of the Bottle Bill (OBRC figures show it made up about 7% of the containers collected in 2024, or 145 million bottles), glass is in some ways the most challenging of the three types of containers OBRC collects.
Compared to aluminum and plastic, glass bottles are heavy, which makes them more expensive to transport. And unlike aluminum cans (59% of the containers OBRC collected in 2024), they don’t have much value as a raw material. And to ensure an outlet for the containers it collects, OBRC has an ownership interest in ORPET, a recycling facility in Columbia County that takes plastic bottles (34% of the containers OBRC collected last year).
But for glass recycling, OBRC depends on a contract with another O-I operation, Glass to Glass, located at 866 N Columbia Blvd. Although the distinctively shaped Owens Brockway plant—its open roof resembles a pair of cupped hands—is a familiar sight to drivers on Interstate 205, it is the nearby Glass to Glass plant that takes in the redeemed bottles.
OBRC vice president Devon Morales says the layoffs (which go into effect Aug. 5) are unfortunate but will not disrupt the cooperative’s business.
“OBRC is proud to deliver roughly 80 million pounds of clean-stream glass to Glass to Glass each year, which is ready to be turned back into bottles,” Morales says. “We do not expect a change in demand for Oregon Bottle Bill glass as a result of O-I’s corporate restructuring.”
The Owens Brockway manufacturing plant, located at 9710 Northeast Glass Plant Road, has long been a target of environmentalists and regulators because of the emissions from its furnaces.
Correction: this post originally gave an incorrect figure for the amount of glass OBRC sends to Glass to Glass. OJP regrets the error.)
