Skip to main contentEvery week, Portland residents faithfully put their recycling out at the curb. But for most of the past two years, this week's Rogue, the recycling company called Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation, was sending shampoo bottles and tuna cans to garbage dumps--rather than to recycling markets.
Smurfit operates one of several processing facilities in the metro area, where haulers bring in the materials collected in curbside bins throughout the city. Since Smurfit makes paper packaging materials, it wants the newsprint and mixed paper, but it also has to take the metal and plastic containers that are commingled with the fiber products (glass is handled separately in Portland).
Smurfit is supposed to sort the plastic and metal containers and send them to companies like Columbia Resource, which, in turn, recycles them.
However, an Oct. 20 letter to Smurfit from the state Department of Environmental Quality indicates that Smurfit kept paper for recycling but appears to have dumped nearly 855 tons of recyclable plastic, tin and aluminum during the past two years. "These are serious violations that undermine the public's faith in the recycling infrastructure," the letter states.
Contacted by the Rogue Desk, Smurfit refused to confirm or deny DEQ's findings.
In August, DEQ officials visited Smurfit's Material Recovery Facility in outer Southeast Portland. They found that Smurfit removed paper and cardboard from its sorting line but allowed plastic, metal and incidental garbage (so-called "non-recoverable materials" such as glass, food-contaminated paper and Styrofoam) to be baled together and treated as garbage--a violation of state regulations. Smurfit officials admitted some of their recyclables were dumped.
Rather than being sent to Columbia Resource for processing, the recyclables were apparently disposed of at a landfill in The Dalles, where records show Smurfit disposed of 355 tons of "contaminated containers" since last year.
In the wake of DEQ's last inspection, Smurfit began shipping its recyclable plastics and metals to China for reprocessing, where there is a high demand for plastics and metals. But the company still may be fined.
City recycling boss Bruce Walker characterized Smurfit's actions as "a serious violation of state law." Speaking to a group of regional recycling officials last month, Walker said, "We are looking at taking some action, and I would encourage all in the room to be concerned about this in terms of the integrity of the recycling system."
WWeek 2015