Glass bottles pile up in 3 Peaks Public House and Taproom and Northwest Best Seafood Company’s commercial recycling container in Ridgefield last week.
Until early August this year, restaurant owners and the like in Clark County didn’t have many options when it came to recycling glass. Only within the city of Vancouver was commercial glass recycling available.
Now, excluding some of the more deeply rural towns and areas such as Yacolt, Amboy, and Cougar, businesses anywhere in Clark County can have their glass picked up through Waste Connections commercial glass service.
There are two container sizes, both with a weekly pickup: 65 gallon for $23 a month or 202 gallon for $62 a month.
Kelly Beckwith, owner of Northwest Best Seafood Company and the adjacent 3 Peaks Public House and Taproom in Ridgefield, said his staff would take at least one trip a week to Clark County’s central recycling station to drop off all the bottles they’d gone through or he would take some cases of bottles home to Longview with him.
“It’s been great,” Beckwith said of Waste Connections new commercial glass service.
When a business from Clark County opts to keep their glass out of a landfill, it doesn't travel far before becoming a new bottle.
The glass is recycled into new bottles by a company called Owens-Illinois, in Portland, said Danielle Womble, business recycling and organics outreach coordinator for Waste Connections, in an email.
"Our circular economy is kept local right here in Portland and Vancouver," she added.
