BottleDrop Redemption Center

The floor is sticky with the remnants of everyone’s soda and beer leaking from their bottles. The lines will be long, particularly at peak time. I went around noon on a Saturday and was lucky enough to snag a machine with no line, but as I went through returning $ 20 worth of bottles, lines formed at every machine. The machines, for their part, have serious trouble detecting Whole Foods brand water bottles. I partly blame the bottle label for having an empty white box that looks like a bar code box, but the machine should still be able to understand where the bar code is. So I’d say 50% of my water bottles need to be reinserted. I swear it took an hour just to return all my bottles.
All in all, this is a bit of hassle so you better decide if the money is worth it to you. Either take smaller batches to the grocery store, or just recycle your bottles without getting the deposit. To be frank, this place is frequented by a lot of people who seem to need to money and to be honest, the $ 20 doesn’t matter that much to me – I just want to recycle. I think I’m going to start giving my bottles to homeless people or something.

This whole process was much harder than it needed to be. Went to Delta Park area bottle drop. Dropped off the cans and got an account and bought special bags. It was pretty messy and gross there, nothing special but a typical bottle drop area anywhere.
The guy who set up my account never told me I have to go online and register it to get to my can deposit refund. Also said any Safeway and Fred Meyer can redeem my deposit. Wrong! I live in inner NE PDX and the stores near me have not put in machines to read the bar codes so I can only redeem by driving back out to a bottle center and making a special trip.
The first time we did that to get our cash for the deposit, my card didnt’ work because i had not registered it online. They also couldn’t activate it there. So went back home but it wouldn’t recognize anything I entered. I sent them an email per their site and a nice person did set up my account and then I still had to go online, and activate it. I am hoping now i can go get the $ 9 off the card so I can never use it again.

Bottle drops in Gresham and on Glisan have update machines. Plus they are faster and your not waiting an hour for a machine.

Over a one hour wait, and a security guard that seems to favor picking on the deaf and other clearly handicapped, yet overlooks people standing at a machine with well over 1,000 containers. Not enough of their carts, and you’re apparently not supposed to use the many shopping carts sitting right outside the entrance. Not worth my time or the grief, I’d rather throw away bottles than wait and watch this again. Will not return.

Compared to Medford’s… It’s filled with spiders, dirty floors… Small waste bins that world work if you had the guy working the floor in Medford… He’s on it, will clean your cart for you, count your cans when the machine refused… Wow.
Portlands is like s Meth lab.

I heard about Bottle Drop from my Dad in Eugene. A while back they took out all the bottle returns at a number of Eugene grocery stores and installed a Bottle Drop on the west side of town. My first experience there was awesome. We were in. We were out. We had our cash. Nice.
So I thought I’d check out the local Bottle Drop on Glisan and 122^nd. It’s located all the way back in the far corner of the shopping center. I’ve been here twice now. The first time, there was quite a long line to use a machine, even with the many available. Although there was a wait, it worked very smoothly. The machines work by scanning the bottle/​can and then sending it down a conveyor belt where it gets crushed somewhere else. So you don’t have jammed machines or have to have someone come unlock the damn thing to shake it down a little bit.
I went again this weekend and arrived shortly after they opened, about 9:15. I still had to wait, but not as long. It’s in that part of town where people really value their cans and also use a lot of them, if you know what I mean. This review would easily be 5 stars if the place wasn’t so crowded.
What I really like is that they have an attendant there to hand count your cans and bottles that the machine won’t take. The machines take 99% of them, but if you have specialty bottles or something, then you can still get them counted for in a short amount of time. Then you just head to the machine, scan your tickets, and it spits out your money. They have an account option, but I’m not fully sure how that works. I just take my money and run!

The mother land of working machines.
16 Working Bottle Machines. That’s right. Working Machines! Each machine is able to take all types of returnables, even those without a deposit. If it can read the label, it will take it.
There are several places around Portlandia that are … less than great. (122^nd/​Powell) (39^th/​Powell) They are all an assault on all your senses! That fact is constant no matter which recycling center you go to. They are all gross on some level.
I want it to be quick, so I can go home and wash my hands.
«Bottle Drop» has a good handwashing sink area, with a hand air dryer. The bathroom was fairly clean as well. They have an attendant that will help you out and even count up to 50 returnables for you. There is also a Drop Off Box, If you set up an account, you can drop off your returnables and they will count your returnables for you and deposit the money onto a Debt Card account with «Bottle Drop».
I did about 345 returnables in less than 15 minutes. It was awesome. As opposed to the half hour I spent the day before at 122^nd. Ave. and only got about 30 cans through. I was on the only working machine. Problem was that you had to keep putting the same can through about two dozen times before it would accept it. (If I come across sounding bitter over my experience yesterday, @ 122^nd. Ave. it’s because I am!)
Bottle Drop, you are an oasis!