Oregon Business

The way it works now, about 16 million pounds of plastic soda and water bottles redeemed each year through Oregon’s beverage container deposit program are baled and sold as scrap, often to foreign companies. Millions more plastic bottles never get redeemed and are instead recycled curbside. They, too, usually end up as exported scrap.

Large swaths of Oregon’s public land are being leased for wind exploration, leaving wildlife at risk and raising serious questions about how energy projects should be developed.