Oregon Public Broadcasting

State officials checking on Oregon’s new law requiring a deposit when plastic bottles of water are sold found more than a quarter of the businesses they checked were not in compliance.  Pete Springer reports.

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission enforces the state’s bottle bill law. 

And as of January 1st, that law requires plastic bottles of water sold in Oregon to be clearly marked to let consumers know they’ll have to pay a five cent deposit.

But of more than seven hundred businesses checked last week by the OLCC, nearly thirty percent weren’t obeying the new law.

Christie Scott is a spokeswoman for the OLCC.

Christie Scott “It doesn’t mean that none of the water on their shelves had 'OR 5 cents' on it, it really just means that they had some bottles on their shelves that didn’t have 'OR 5 cents'.”

Scott says the OLCC is still educating retailers about the new law.  She says many small-business owners didn’t realize they weren’t allowed to keep backstock of unlabelled bottled water on their shelves.

Statewide, the Portland-metro area had the highest rate of compliance, while the Salem area had the lowest.