Metro Removes Garbage By The Ton, 243 Tons In Just 3 Months

PORTLAND, OR — Twenty-two appliances. Sixty electronic items. One hundred and thirty-six couches. At least 223 mattresses. Three hundred and eighteen propane tanks. Six hundred shopping carts. Nine hundred and seventy-two tires.

It's not a shopping list for a strange trip to Costco.

That's just a partial list of things removed from the streets of Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties by Metro's Regional Illegal Dumping Patrols in the past three months.

In that time, RID Patrols have collected at least 243 tons of garbage that had been illegally dumped. That's from responding to 1,041 separate sites. They've received 1,849 complaints over the past quarter.

Metro says that it's not just directly on the streets and sidewalks but in lots and even hidden in bushes such as the mattres in the picture above that they provided.

Nearly half of the waste that they have removed has been residential items dumped in public areas.

Metro stresses that there are some things that they don't touch. Abandoned cars are handled by various cities and their transportation bureaus most offen, they say.

And RID patrols cannot go on private property.

The mattresses being dumped are just a small part of a much larger problem, says Metro's Senior Solid Waste Planner Scott Klag.

"We estimate that the Portland metropolitan area sends about 250,000 mattresses to landfills each year," he says, adding that the rest of the state combined contributes a similar number.

"Mattresses can pose a safety hazard to solid waste workers, damage equipment, and are difficult to compact and place in our long-haul waste transfer trailers."

Klag says those difficulties are a major part of the reason that Metro is supporting legislation in Salem that would create a mattress recycling program in Oregon.

California, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are the only states that currently have similar programs.

Under the legislation, every time a mattress is purchased in Oregon, the customer would pay a fee to help fund the program.

Association of Oregon Recyclers Chair Kristin Leichner says that program has been successful in the other states.

"In California alone, more than 1,511,553 mattresses were collected in 2020 in addition to 75,904 illegally dumped mattresses," she says. "Of all the mattresses collected, 77 percent of them were recycled."

Earlier this week, the state Senate's Energy and Environment committee sent the bill on to the Ways and Means Committee, which helps write the budget.