a glass apart

Back in the day, before I knew what was

what, I worked for a catering company planning some of our city’s cultural events.For one, our chef and his crew found themselves tasked with sending chickens down a conveyor belt.Their destiny: a furnace in a glass factory.The factory was Bullseye Glass in Southeast Portland.Bullseye began in 1974, when three recent art-school graduates—Ray Ahlgren, Dan Schwoerer, and Boyce Lundstrom—cobbled together a glass factory from shipyard scraps and began making hand-rolled sheets of colored glass for the stained-glass trade.Their raw material: cullet—broken glass from discarded bottles, much of it available locally as a result of the Bottle Bill.Just three years earlier, Oregon had become the first state in the country to require deposits on beer and soft drink containers by law.The idea of returning bottles for a deposit was hardly new.Growing up on Rising Sun Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia, I remember my dad returning empty beer bottles to the distributor across the street. They went back by the case in cardboard boxes so hard you could practically knock on them.My dad wasn’t thinking about recycling. It was just part of a routine.For generations, breweries had operated their own deposit system. Customers returned their empties; breweries washed and refilled them.But as beverage companies expanded their reach and competed for attention on store shelves, the refillable bottle became a problem. Companies needed containers that were lighter, cheaper to ship, and distinctive in color and shape.Gradually, disposable bottles and cans replaced the refillable ones, changing the industry and the landscape.Empty containers began accumulating along Oregon’s highways, rivers, and beaches. Fortunately, Oregon had someone who was paying attention: Richard Chambers, a logging–equipment salesman who enjoyed hiking, climbing, and kayaking.His persistence helped to turn a familiar practice into public policy.In 1971, Oregon became the first state in the nation to require deposits on beer and soft drink containers.The purpose wasn’t to create a recycling system. It was to reduce litter along Oregon’s highways and scenic byways.And it worked.A five-cent deposit put a value on what had been thrown away.Bottles that once littered Oregon’s roadsides began coming back.Across town, Owens-Illinois was putting cullet to work in another way: turning used glass into new bottles for the region’s emerging food and beverage culture.At its peak in the 1980s, the plant employed nearly 400 people, producing bottles for Northwest breweries, wineries and food processors.Owens-Illinois was among the pioneers using recovered glass to manufacture new bottles.A system took shape that reduced waste, conserved raw materials and energy, supported local manufacturing, and created stable, skilled jobs.But systems change.In 2025, Owens-Illinois closed its Portland plant. Nearly a century of glassmaking at the site ended.We still return the bottle. But we no longer make the bottle here.The glass goes someplace else.A system that once connected collection, manufacturing, and local jobs lost an essential piece.

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leading by doing

Richard Chambers sold logging equipment for a living.He also loved hiking, climbing, and kayaking through Oregon’s forests and waterways. On his adventures, he encountered the bottles and cans people left behind.In 1968, after reading about an effort in British Columbia to curb disposable containers, Chambers contacted his state representative, Republican Paul Hanneman.His idea was simple: put a deposit on bottles and cans and give people a reason to bring them back.Chambers wrote letters, rallied support, and helped bring the proposal before the Oregon Legislature.Among those Chambers brought to testify was a farmer who had lost four cows after they ingested discarded glass and metal fragments from bottles and cans discarded in his pastures.His first attempt failed in 1969.But Chambers persisted.In 1971, with Governor Tom McCall’s support and a growing coalition of citizens and conservation groups, Oregon passed the nation’s first Bottle Bill.

a remarkable turnaround

Bottle collection before & after the Bottle Bill

All figures refer to refillable glass bottles

the bottle becomes the brand

In 1915, Coca-Cola commissioned a bottle so distinctive it could be recognized by touch alone.The curving glass bottle became one of the most recognizable packages in the world. The container was no longer simply holding the product. It was selling it.The early bottles were refillable. But as Coca-Cola’s popularity grew, so did its influence on how Americans bought and consumed beverages.In 1960, Coke reached American consumers in cans. The familiar bottle even appeared on early can labels to reassure customers that the drink inside was the same.

Owens-Illinois Bottling Plant

the clawThe Owens-Illinois building is a familiar sight from the freeway to NE Sandy.The distinctive “claw" on top is essentially a giant passive ventilation system for the glass factory.Inside the Owens-Illinois plant, furnaces melted glass at temperatures approaching 3000 ℉. The “claw” allowed the tremendous heat of glassmaking to rise and escape naturally while keeping Oregon’s rain outside.

form followed function

A Centuries-Old Problem was solved in Portland.

To make colored glass, each hue uses a different mineral or metallic additive, which can change how the glass expands and contracts when heated and cooled.Incompatible glass fused together can crack.In 1979, Australian glass artist
Klaus Moje came to Pilchuck Glass School in Washington to teach. There he met Bullseye co-founder Boyce Lundstrom.Moje was searching for a broad range of colored glasses that could reliably be fused together in a kiln.That challenge changed Bullseye’s direction.The company began developing a palette of colored glasses engineered and tested to be compatible with one another, giving artists something closer to a painter’s palette—but in glass.Bullseye’s innovation came at a remarkable moment for glass in the Pacific Northwest. Pilchuck Glass School was attracting artists interested in pushing beyond traditional forms.The Pacific Northwest became an international destination for glass art–and Portland was a part of it.

GLASS

Bottles and JarsThat’s it.

Wine bottles, beer bottles, olive-oil bottles, jam jars, pickle jars–the containers made to hold food and drink and sometimes medicine–this is the type of glass that is recycled.

Don’t even think about drinking glasses, eyeglasses, mirrors, windows, ceramics, and glass cookware–they may look like they belong, but they don’t. They are made differently and melt at different temperatures.

Glass is collected separately from the other recyclable materials–paper, plastic, and metal.

The reason:Broken bottles and jars can still be recycled. But when broken glass mixes with paper, plastic, and metal, it interferes with recovering those materials. Glass shards are hard to sort, can damage machinery, and pose a serious safety risk for workers.Keep glass separate.

sort it out

GLASS

That's it.

Deep Dive

Where did all the bottles go?

act I

act II

Everything old is new again

Oregon's Bottle Bill helped keep containers off roadsides and out of landfills.

Over time, the system evolved from returning bottles for reuse to collecting them primarily for recycling.

Today, most eligible beverage containers carry a ten-cent deposit. Consumers can return their empties through BottleDrop centers, retailers, and other collection locations.

Wine bottles are not included in the Bottle Bill. The bottles can be recycled, but there is no deposit incentive to bring them back.

The founders of Revino are working to bring the refillable bottle back.

Keenan O’Hern grew up between Oregon and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, returning empty bottles was simply part of everyday life.Adam Rack grew up in western Kansas, not far from The Land Institute, a nonprofit developing perennial grains that grow back year after year, reducing soil disturbance and agriculture inputs.

Different backgrounds, but both experiencing systems conserving our resources.Working together with O-I Glass (formerly Owens-Illinois) and building relationships with Oregon wineries, they are developing a system to bring refillable bottles back.Participating wineries fill Revino bottles and send them to market. When empty, customers can return the bottles to a participating collection location, such as New Seasons Market.The collected bottles return to Revino’s washing facility in McMinnville, where they are cleaned, inspected, and prepared for another refill.The idea is not entirely new to Oregon Winemakers.In 2010, Vincent Fritzsche of Vincent Wine Company, John Grochau of Grochau Cellars and Anne Hubatch of Helioterra Wines joined forces to create Guild Winemakers.Pooling resources, they purchased grapes to produce affordable blends, including a Rhône-style red.Their wines appeared in bottles, kegs and boxes–good wine, meant to be enjoyed now.Coopers Hall in southeast Portland took the idea further, building an urban winery around wine on tap from reusable stainless-steel kegs.These weren't just experiments in packaging. They were different ways of making, distributing, selling, and enjoying wine.Winemakers and businesses were finding their own solutions.

In 2025, Business Oregon awarded Revino $250,000 to develop its washing and sanitation infrastructure.

Oregon's changing recycling laws may provide another incentive.

The price of packaging

In 2025, Oregon began implementing its Recycling Modernization Act, shifting more of the cost of recycling packaging from households and local governments to the businesses putting it into the marketplace.Circular Action Alliance, or CAA, a nonprofit organization selected by the state, administers the program under the oversight of Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality.Fees vary by material and weight.For 2026, the published base fee for glass packaging was approximately ten cents per pound.For a winery selling 8000 cases of wine in Oregon, that's about100,000 bottles of wine.If each bottle weighs 1.2 pounds, it could mean $12,000 in glass packaging fees alone, before exemptions or adjustments.Revino raised an interesting question:If a winery returns, washes, and refills the same bottle, should it pay a new packaging fee each time?In comments submitted to DEQ in May 2025, Revino sought clarification that qualifying reusable bottles would not incur additional fees each time they are returned to the market.A winery using single-use bottles buys new packaging with every production run. A winery using refillable bottles can keep the same glass circulating.Collecting, transporting, washing, and inspecting bottles also costs money. But those expenses can be seen as an investment in a system that keeps its materials in circulation.

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The milkman had it figured out.

Some Oregon dairies still sell milk in returnable glass bottles.

Meet Schoch Dairy in Helvetia and Lady Lane Farm in Mulino.

act II

the days of wine and roses

Less than sixty years ago,

few considered the Willamette Valley a serious wine region. Then in 1979, Oregon wine surprised the world–Eyrie Vineyards in the Dundee Hills entered their 1975 South Block Reserve Pinot Noir in a blind tasting in France and finished among the top ten. The following year, Burgundian producer Robert Drouhin organized a rematch in Beaune. Eyrie finished second, just behind Drouhin's 1959 Chambolle-Musigny.

Like mushrooms after a rain, vineyards began sprouting across the Willamette Valley. And all that wine needed bottles.

Pinot Noir producers gravitated toward Burgundy-style bottles: sloping shoulders, particular shades of green, heavier bases, distinctive molds and, at the premium end, bottles that felt heavy in the hand.
As wineries differentiated their brands, bottles took on different shapes and colors reflecting the grape and style of the wine they produced.But a growing wine industry did not automatically mean more demand for our local glass bottle manufacturers. The bottles had to meet the wineries' specifications, prices, and production schedules.
Changing colors, molds, bottle weights, and production runs costs time and money. Northwest wineries sourced bottles from manufacturers in California, Mexico, China and Italy.

In 2008 a new glass-bottle factory opened in Kalama, Washington, built in part to serve the Northwest wine industry.
Furnace problems contributed to its closure in 2009. Production resumed in 2012 when new owners rebuilt the plant, investing roughly $35 million, including a $13 million oxygen-fired natural gas furnace, to more efficiently generate the melting power required to make wine bottles from recovered glass. The rebuilt plant was designed to produce more than 100 million bottles a year.2015 Owens-Illinois bought the Kalama plant specifically to expand its West Coast wine and craft-beer business. Meanwhile, its Portland plant was contracting, causing it to idle furnaces in subsequent years.

In 2023 Owens-Illinois put its Portland plant on hot hold, temporarily halting production because of insufficient demand. The plant re-opened in 2024, but then permanently closed in 2025.

Yet in 2023, Oregon wineries sold roughly six million cases of wine–the equivalent of 72 million wine bottles.That's a lot of bottles.

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why glass

Glass plays a critical role in food storage because it is non-reactive.Unlike plastic, glass does not absorb flavors, leach chemicals, or degrade over time when exposed to oils, acids, or heat.This makes it especially well-suited for Oregon’s beers, ciders, honey, preserves, and dairy.

act I

one million bottles of beer on the wall 🎶

1888 A Fountain of Beer

Portland was becoming a prosperous industrial city, eager to display its refinement.

To celebrate the dedication of its elegant new Skidmore Fountain, brewer Henry Weinhard offered to fill it with beer.

The city fathers declined the offer.

A century later, a new generation of brewers would help establish Oregon as a destination for craft beer.

1984 Bridgeport Brewery Opened

Oregon wine pioneers Dick and Nacy Ponzi opened Bridgeport Brewing in an old rope factory in what would become Portland's Pearl District.Their first brewmaster, Karl Ockert, built the brewery with salvaged dairy tanks, baling wire, and whatever else he could find.

1984 Widmer Brothers began brewing.

1985 Oregon passed the Brewpub Bill, allowing breweries to make and sell beer on the same premises.

1985 McMenamins joined the list.

1987 Full Sail opened in Hood River.

1988 Deschutes opened in Bend.

1988 Rogue opened in Ashland.

Owens-Illinois had been making bottles in Portland for decades. As Oregon's craft breweries multiplied, demand for locally made bottles grew.

2013 More than one million bottles a day

Owens-Illinois' Portland plant was producing more than one million bottles a day, primarily for local microbreweries.

🎶

take one down...🎶

2016 Widmer starts putting Hefeweizen in cans.

2018 Deschutes puts Mirror Pond, Fresh Squeezed IPA, and Pacific Wonderland in cans.

Cans are lighter to ship, easier to carry, and welcome in places where glass isn't–concerts, ballparks, campgrounds, and hiking trails.Though I wouldn’t recommend beer while mountain climbing.As packaging preferences changed, so did the economics of making glass bottles.

2019 Owens-Illinois idles one of its Portland furnaces.

🎶

93 jobs are lost 🎵

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