Oregon\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
Owens-Brockway wrote in a press release that the closure is part of a company-wide initiative to \u201creduce redundant capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The layoffs are similar to ones the company launched two years ago, in which 81 employees \u2014 or 70% of its workforce<\/a> \u2014 were cut. The company had blamed the cuts on the regional wine market\u2019s slowdown at the time and said it would continue to operate with the reduced staff. <\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n Owens-Brockway\u2019s facility, which opened in 1956, was Oregon\u2019s largest recycler of glass bottles, at times recycling 240,000 pounds of glass<\/a> containers daily. It\u2019s been fined for air quality violations since 2004<\/a> largely due to the company\u2019s two glass melting furnaces having exceeded opacity limits<\/a>, which relate to air visibility and can cause serious health problems. <\/p>\n 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<\/a> to install pollution controls by 2023\u2019s end or shut down. <\/p>\n 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<\/a> on June 30, 2024, nearly a year past state regulators\u2019 deadline. <\/p>\n Oregon\u2019s workforce has been met with a series of layoffs this summer. Intel, Oregon\u2019s largest corporate employer, laid off<\/a> 2,400 of its Oregon employees this month. Nike hinted at layoffs in June<\/a>, though did not disclose how many of its workers would be affected. Millworkers<\/a> and Fred Meyer employees<\/a> have been hit by job cuts and closures, bringing the state\u2019s unemployment rate to 4.9% this month \u2013 an increase from 4.4% in January. <\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oregon\u2019s largest glass recycling plant, Owens-Brockway Glass Container in Northeast Portland, will permanently close its production facility and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[37654,192,37655,2232,37656,20200,18223,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-48325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-cancer-risk","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-environmental-pollution","11":"tag-oregon","12":"tag-owens-brockway-glass-container","13":"tag-pollution","14":"tag-portland","15":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}