Oregon’s largest glass recycling plant, Owens-Brockway Glass Container in Northeast Portland, will permanently close its production facility and lay off 90 of its employees early next month.
Owens-Brockway wrote in a press release that the closure is part of a company-wide initiative to “reduce redundant capacity.”
The layoffs are similar to ones the company launched two years ago, in which 81 employees — or 70% of its workforce — were cut. The company had blamed the cuts on the regional wine market’s slowdown at the time and said it would continue to operate with the reduced staff.
The company said in a notice to state officials on Wednesday that while the recycling facility will be permanently closed, the company will still operate a warehouse at the plant near Portland International Airport.
Owens-Brockway’s facility, which opened in 1956, was Oregon’s largest recycler of glass bottles, at times recycling 240,000 pounds of glass containers daily. It’s been fined for air quality violations since 2004 largely due to the company’s two glass melting furnaces having exceeded opacity limits, which relate to air visibility and can cause serious health problems.
In 2021, the company faced a $1 million fine for its air quality violations. Soon after, that fine was reduced to $662,000 through anagreement with state regulators to install pollution controls by 2023’s end or shut down.
A year later, the company announced plans to spend around $11 million on upgrades to its Portland plant, including pollution controllers, which were expected to be completed by April 2024. They were installed on June 30, 2024, nearly a year past state regulators’ deadline.
Oregon’s workforce has been met with a series of layoffs this summer. Intel, Oregon’s largest corporate employer, laid off 2,400 of its Oregon employees this month. Nike hinted at layoffs in June, though did not disclose how many of its workers would be affected. Millworkers and Fred Meyer employees have been hit by job cuts and closures, bringing the state’s unemployment rate to 4.9% this month – an increase from 4.4% in January.
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