NE Portland glass recycling plant will shut down

Early next month, 90 workers will be let go at Owens-Brockway Glass Container, the biggest glass recycling company in Oregon, which is located in Northeast Portland.

The shutdown is a part of a company-wide effort to minimize redundant capacity, according to a news release from Owens-Brockway.

The layoffs are comparable to those the company started two years ago, when 81 workers, or 70% of the workforce, were let go. The company stated that it will continue to function with the fewer employees and attributed the layoffs to the decline in the local wine industry at the time.

While the recycling facility will be permanently closed, the firm will continue to run a warehouse at the factory near Portland International Airport, it informed state officials in a notice on Wednesday.

When it first opened in 1956, Owens-Brockway’s factory was the biggest glass bottle recycler in Oregon, recycling up to 240,000 pounds of glass containers every day. Due in large part to the company’s two glass melting furnaces exceeding opacity limits—which are related to air visibility and can result in major health issues—it has been punished for air quality breaches since 2004.

The corporation was fined $1 million for its air quality infractions in 2021. Soon after, a deal with state officials to either install pollution controls by the end of 2023 or shut down resulted in the fine being lowered to $662,000.

A year later, the business said that it will invest approximately $11 million in pollution controllers and other plant improvements in Portland, which were anticipated to be finished by April 2024. Nearly a year after the deadline set by state officials, they were installed on June 30, 2024.

This summer, Oregon’s workforce has experienced a number of layoffs. This month, Intel, the biggest employer in Oregon, lay off 2,400 workers in the state. In June, Nike hinted at layoffs, although it did not say how many employees would be impacted.Due to job losses and closures affecting mill workers and Fred Meyer employees, the state’s unemployment rate increased from 4.4% in January to 4.9% this month.