Wide-eyed, a panhandler in the Bend Redemption Center parking lot declared that a secret shadow government in Portland runs the statewide BottleDrop recycling program as part of a nefarious plot to control the population.
With such an informational murkiness encircling the BottleDrop from local to state levels, this man isn’t alone in offering crackpot theories.
Are tinfoil hats recyclable? Only if uncontaminated with food waste, experts say. But conspiracies aside, a very real uncertainty surrounds the future of the Redemption Center in Bend.
Documents reviewed by the Source show efforts by at least one city committee to explore moving the BottleDrop facility out of its current location in the Bend Central District.
Bottle (re)cap
Oregon’s Bottle Bill, or Beverage Container Act, was enacted in 1971 and took effect the following year. In effect, it added a 5-cent deposit to purchases of applicable cans and bottles, while letting green-minded individuals make that cash back by returning containers to retailers legally obligated by the bill to accept recyclables. The legislation itself never mandated that 5-cent price increase; rather, it was a choice by “dealers” (beverage distributors and retail sellers) to avoid paying out of their own pockets.
According to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the bill was “viewed primarily as a litter control measure” and proved immediately successful in that regard. Beverage containers accounted for close to half of the state’s total roadside litter in 1971. By 1979, that percentage had plummeted to less than a tenth, ODEQ said.
Thanks to a deposit bump from 5 to 10 cents in 2017, collectors can make up to $35 in recycling earnings a day. Since 2021, Oregon has handily led the nation in redemption rates.
But the bill has long had its opponents.
Beverage distributors lobbied against it initially, unenthusiastic about logistic and financial adjustments required to comply. Retailers still recoil at having to manage the actual redemption process, not just troubled by accommodating a large influx of recyclables, but by the visible homelessness that often accompanies those cans and bottles to stores.
In 2024, a Target lobbyist bemoaned “awful issues with the bottle bill” in Portland. “Our grocery retail members have experienced uncomfortable and unsafe interactions as a result of operating bottle returns,” Amanda Dalton, CEO of the Northwest Grocery Association, told Willamette Week the same year.
The Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative came into existence in 2009 as a statewide alliance between beverage distributors operating under the Bottle Bill; previously, these businesses handled recycling affairs independently or through regional cooperation.
“OBRC serves as a not-for-profit statewide operator with full vertical integration, making the co-op a major employer and providing over 500 clean economy jobs in Oregon,” its website reads.
OBRC brought along what most people now associate with the Bottle Bill: Bottle Drops, or Redemption Centers. These are facilities owned and operated by OBRC, which “serve as the primary container return location for consumers in those areas, on behalf of retailers located within a close geographic proximity of the facilities.”
Retailers did feel some relief; in 2024, 82.4% of container returns went through the BottleDrop network, with the remaining 17.6% occurring at retail stores. But, as not all businesses fit into that “close geographic proximity,” complaints have continued in many parts of the state.
And the BottleDrop locations, of which 27 exist in Oregon, have their own orbits of impoverishment and resulting controversy. What began as a litter control measure has become, perhaps unintentionally, a lifeline to many Oregonians living on the streets.
Locally, business owners and homeless advocates agree on one thing, though not for the same reasons: Bend has yet to solve its “BottleDrop problem.”
Bend-emption
Stroll down Second Street in the Bend Central District, or BCD, until you reach the BottleDrop – the Bend Redemption Center. Now take a look around.
Someone’s scattered belongings next to a rock spray-painted with the phrase “Chi-Raq.” An alleyway memorial for 24-year-old Hailey DeLangis, who fatally overdosed nearby in late 2023. A lone tent on the sidewalk under the Second and Hawthorne street sign, sheltering someone unwilling (or unable) to camp any farther away from their sole source of income.
Contrary to what the rock might tell you, this isn’t Chicago. Nor is it Portland, or any comparable major metropolitan area. But Bend, despite only recently graduating into a growing city from what’s long been considered a smallish town, has a per capita homelessness crisis that keeps pace with America’s most urbanized metropoles.
With roughly 106,000 residents and over 1,000 unhoused individuals in Bend, per the 2025 Point In Time Count, nearly 1% of the population lacks adequate shelter.
In “Chi-Raq,” a city of 2.7 million, last year’s PIT Count found around 7,500 people experiencing homelessness last year. That’s 145 per 100,000 residents, equating to an estimated 800 fewer than Bend per capita.
Differing climate, geography and state policy add layers of complexity to this comparison. But the statistics do show that Bend is home to disproportionate homelessness, rivaling cities like San Francisco when adjusted for population.
The BCD, a neighborhood that the City wants to infuse with millions in public and private investments, is the palpitating heart of this visible crisis, and at its heart is the Redemption Center.
OBRC opened this BottleDrop location in December 2013 “as part of our ongoing effort to increase Oregon’s redemption rates and deliver a positive experience to consumers,” the cooperative’s co-founder and former president John Andersen said at the time. Participating retailers within a 3.5-mile radius of the facility (a former office building sold to OBRC by The Salvation Army for $540,000) are not required to accept cans and bottles from the public.
Those with a financial stake in the BCD, though, wish things were the other way around. “If the stores make profit from selling beverages, they should take the cans back, just like Amazon should take cardboard boxes back,” said Tod Breslau, owner of the Campfire Hotel, an outdoorsy-themed tourist lodging adjacent to the BottleDrop.
Breslau, a commercial property broker, told the Source that the BottleDrop brings safety issues to the BCD that make privatized investment – something the City of Bend is licking its lips at the prospect of – unsustainable.
“My hotel is trespassed and attacked every night with homeless folks going through my trash. I pay $30,000 a year for security to come and kick people off the property, and it’s all because of the cans,” he said. “Nobody will admit that it’s all because of the cans.”
Portland’s more “spread out” Bottle Bill model is preferable to Breslau, while Bend “puts it all in one area,” he said, a “burden” on the BCD.
In meetings, other BCD business owners have backed Breslau’s sentiment and argued that visible homelessness along Second Street deters many Bendites from wanting to visit the BCD, and from using the BottleDrop itself.
Sheila Miller, a spokesperson for the Bend Police Department, said, “I think it’s fair to say that our officers are frequently called to that area for a variety of reasons – many are drug-related.” She told the Source that Bend PD receives “many trespassing calls in that area from property owners asking to have people removed. We also see a lot of quality-of-life issues like loitering, drug use, alcohol or drug intoxication, people experiencing mental health issues, littering and property crimes.”
Police data shows that, as of Jan. 25, Bend PD has responded to at least six calls for service in 2026 within a block of the BottleDrop, including one alleged assault and multiple loitering complaints.
Call it something else
Breslau, the vice president of the BCD Business Association, said, “It seems pretty clear that everyone wants to move the BottleDrop,” adding that the BCDBA, “a loose group of about 60 business owners,” has discussed it with city government since 2019.
The BCD falls within a federal Opportunity Zone, and within a municipal Urban Renewal District – the “Core Area.” Both designations channel extra tax money into the BCD; the latter creates a 30-year Tax Increment Finance plan, allowing “any new tax dollars generated from yearly growth or redevelopment of the property to go back into the area,” the Source reported last summer.
The Bend Urban Renewal Agency is “responsible for governing, planning, and implementing” tax increment financing. Although its members consist of the mayor, City Council and city manager, BURA is “a separate municipal corporation” that works closely with the Core Area Advisory Board, a committee formed by BURA in 2021 “to oversee implementation of the Core Area TIF plan.”
In November, CAAB recommended that BURA “continue to work in partnership with [OBRC] to explore and advance the relocation of the Bottle Drop facility.” This marks the first formal confirmation by a city-affiliated organization that moving the BottleDrop is a key element of revitalizing the BCD.
“That doesn’t mean that there is currently any effort at the moment to relocate [the BottleDrop],” said Jonathan Taylor, Bend’s Urban Renewal Manager. “It’s just identifying that property as a potential option for redevelopment, because that’s where the Hawthorne Crossing landing is going.” Construction on the Hawthorne pedestrian bridge is expected to begin in late 2027 after a project bid.
“The City is working closely with property owners on housing opportunities, businesses, beautification opportunities … identifying areas and parcels in the BCD that will have the biggest impact in creating a ‘live, work and play’ place,” CAAB chairperson Corie Harlan told the Source.
Other City of Bend committee members and officials did not respond to requests for comment.
This situation attracts careful choices of communication. Developers prefer the term “revitalization” to the baggage-heavy description of “gentrification.” City officials prefer to engage with the BCD under the cloak of BURA. And even the term “urban renewal” has a euphemism.
“As part of the City’s commitment to equity and inclusion, [BURA] will make all possible attempts to use the term Tax Increment Finance or TIF rather than ‘urban renewal’…” the City’s website reads. “The term TIF… does not evoke past practices of other urban renewal agencies throughout the country wherein minorities and vulnerable populations were displaced to clear the way for redevelopment. This department, and its communication, aims to avoid those connotations and outcomes.”
Business owner Breslau, on the other hand, spoke bluntly about his wish to “ban the can” for the sake of the BCD, regardless of those “outcomes” mentioned by BURA. “Of course it will negatively affect homeless people, but you can’t let them crawl through your trash,” he said. “It’s not a dignified income.”
Redemption, not just recycling
Individuals who rely on the BottleDrop in Bend couldn’t see things more differently.
“Having been hanging around there for almost five years, having this work better than anything else in my life – it made me feel like I was actually doing something productive with my time,” said Justin Gottlieb, founder of We CAN, a local organization that provides extra support to people, primarily unhoused, who use the BottleDrop “as a livelihood.”
He estimated that 5% of Redemption Center patrons fall into this “professional” category, while others, including a “huge Hispanic and immigrant demographic,” rely on the BottleDrop for supplemental income.
Gottlieb, formerly homeless himself, holds a master’s degree in public administration. “Since I started doing this in 2020, I’ve pulled $60,208 out of the trash,” he said. “Because of the $35 a day limit, I’ve paid out $8,656 to those sitting on the street to try and give them a sense of purpose to get their lives moving.”
Three years ago, Marlon Jones, originally from California, had a relationship end abruptly and found himself “abandoned” and homeless in Bend with no resources or connections. “Hustling cans” through the BottleDrop allowed him to save up enough money to travel home and see his grandmother before she passed away. Canning also motivated Jones to resume sobriety, which he had broken due to the challenges of homelessness, he told the Source. He now works as a groundskeeper in Bend.
Opponents have posited that homeless people use cash from canning to fund fentanyl purchases. “Drugs is the easiest way to kill yourself,” Gottlieb responded. “If you tell people that they are not entitled to survival without giving them better options, they are going to try and kill themselves. This isn’t about drugs. It’s about how we’re treating our human resources.”
Rebutting the cans-for-drugs argument, Pam Marsh, a state representative from Ashland, told Willamette Week that the Bottle Bill, created purely as a recycling incentive, is now “a form of social safety net… people are standing at grocery stores in my district and using that money to buy food.”
Gottlieb estimated that a full-time canner could make over $8,000 a year, largely because people aren’t recycling properly – the same people, he said, who complain about the unhoused digging through their bins.
“For many folks out there, this is their only option,” Gottlieb shared. “Guys on the street are really working hard to come up. How else do you win if you don’t have access to a bathroom or a kitchen?”
Moving and shifting
City committee members said that the idea to “explore and advance” relocating the BottleDrop is still in its earliest stages. “We’re laying the foundation for the next five years,” Taylor said. Harlan described the logistics of a theoretical move as “tricky.”
“While we continue to stay engaged with Bend City officials about progress with the revitalization efforts for the Bend Central District, we do not have a planned relocation for the center at this time,” Liz Philpott, a spokesperson for OBRC, told the Source. “In 2025, the Bend Redemption Center redeemed and recycled more than 40 million containers, returning over $4 million to Bend area residents and nonprofit organizations.”
OBRC keeps all unredeemed deposits, which amounted to $21.9 million in 2024, the cooperative said. Last year, OBRC VP of External Affairs Devon Morales told The Bulletin that relocation “could have a significant negative impact to thousands of residents and hundreds of local nonprofit organizations.”
Some BottleDrop patrons aren’t thrilled by the idea of the facility moving. One homeless canner, Casey, said he’d heard similar talk in the past. “I like this location, it’s more centrally located,” he opined. Another patron mentioned public transportation access as a benefit of the current location.
“Absolutely [moving] would make things harder,” Jones said. “It’s central – you move it way to the north, especially with the bus not being free anymore, nobody’s gonna wanna go.” He suggested that OBRC employ “better security” around the current BottleDrop location as an alternative: “There are solutions other than moving.”
A BottleDrop employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, alleged that OBRC and the City were discussing a relocation to north Bend, “near the Costco.” The Source could not verify this claim.
The City owns two homeless shelters in the BCD, both operated by Shepherd’s House Ministries. Gottlieb is unsure if this social infrastructure will be able to coexist with long-term plans for development. “But if not there, then where?” he asked.
In the pursuit of a vibrant Bend Central District – “a place where you can live, work, and play,” if you can afford it – the City of Bend must soon decide whether it considers unhoused individuals a “vulnerable population” that would be “displaced to clear the way for redevelopment” — something it specifically “aims to avoid.”
This article appears in the Source January 29, 2026.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
