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Oregon House OKs semiconductor aid plan

Oregon House OKs semiconductor aid plan

The House gave final legislative approval on Thursday, April 6, to Oregon’s $200 million-plus bid for a share of the billions available in federal incentive to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

Got food scraps that even Rover doesn’t want, but you don’t want to dump them down the disposal or throw them into the trash? Now there’s a way to see that they are composted along with your yard debris. Last month, Pride Disposal Co. began offering i...

Got food scraps that even Rover doesn’t want, but you don’t want to dump them down the disposal or throw them into the trash? Now there’s a way to see that they are composted along with your yard debris. Last month, Pride Disposal Co. began offering its customers in Sherwood, King City, Tigard and Durham the chance to place food scraps into lawn and yard debris containers for pickup. That means residents can now toss in coffee grounds, eggshells, fruit and even bones. “It gets added to the same cart where your grass clippings, leaves, things like that go,” said Kristin Leichner, president of the Sherwood-headquartered Pride Disposal Company. What they don’t want to see is liquids or items such as fast food wrappers, diapers and the like. “We intended on doing this program rollout in 2020, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, we didn’t feel the timing was right because of the potential added cost, and we were being sensitive to not trying to add any additional cost to people during that time,” Leichner said. The service adds about 35 cents more to regular garbage bills, since there is an additional processing fee. The debris eventually ends up at the Recology Organics facility in North Plains. Beaverton and Hillsboro already have similar programs, Leichner noted. “That was the thing we heard most about, like, ‘Hey, when can I start doing this?’ And so it was something that we felt our customers really wanted to have available to them,” said Leichner, who is the third generation to work at the family-owned business that’s been in Sherwood since 1987. Also, last month, Pride Disposal expanded its curbside recycling program with Recycle+ in the King City, Sherwood and Durham communities. (Tigard doesn’t have the program yet.) Now, in addition to their red glass recycling bins, residents of King City, Sherwood and Durham can get a separate distinctive 20-gallon purple bin to recycle: Film plastic, such as grocery bags and toilet paper wrappers. No. 1 clamshell containers, or those plastic containers with hinges. Textiles or other clothing that has surpassed its useful life and is not intended for donation. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs — note that this doesn’t include long fluorescent tube lights, which can be brought to Pride’s depot for recycling. “This is an optional service,” Leichner said of Recycle+, which began operating in parts of unincorporated Washington County last year before expanding to Beaverton. “There is an additional cost for it, but it’s for folks who might have large enough volumes of these certain materials that they want to be able to recycle them.” Leichner added, “These are materials that cannot go in the standard curbside recycling.” The Recycle+ program requires a flat monthly fee, ranging between $2.50 and $2.55, depending on a resident’s service area. When residents call for pickup, there’s an additional fee of between $9.25 and $9.45. For those residents who use the service only once a month, the cost is between $11.75 to $12. In addition, Pride also supplies clear plastic bags to place each of the various materials inside the bin. “Washington County did some surveying before they rolled out the program, and most people that responded to the survey said they would need service no more than every two to three months,” said Leichner. Hard-to-recycle materials can also be dropped off at Pride Recycling Depot, 13910 S.W. Tualatin-Sherwood Road in Sherwood, at no charge. Leichner said Pride is also continuing its curbside battery recycling program. Batteries are a hazard for garbage haulers in general. “Rechargeable and lithium batteries start a lot of fires,” said Leichner. “They can start fires in the garbage in our trucks or in our facility. We’ve had some of those fires. Thankfully, none of them have been catastrophic — knock on wood.” Recycling batteries curbside gets them out of the waste stream and in turn prevents potential fires in garbage trucks or at hauling facilities, Leichner said. Batteries can be recycled in the same containers as glass recycling, but they must be in a quart-sized zipped plastic bag.

Sherwood has also welcomed the Recycle+ program, in which residents can pay for a purple curbside bin and special pickups of hard-to-recycle materials.