Oregon passed the bottle bill where you still get a 5 or 10 cent deposit refund for returning the empties. Of course that cost is added at the time of purchase.
When I lived there between April 2000 and June 2002 we would have to visit the recycling machines. Each major grocery store has these located in their parking lots. They are large machines where you insert bottles and cans and then get you refund ticket.
I started calling them the “great equalizer” because no matter your social or economic status, everyone had to show up and stand in the sticky floor and insert their cans and bottles 1 at a time. The other rub is if you buy national brand products you can go to any location and return the cans and bottles. But if you bought Walmart brand product you couldn’t take it back to Safeway’s machine. Plus you had to keep a garbage can at home just for this purpose. It was a stinky, sticky, smelly mess as well.
So here’s how to scam those. We were from Washington state and would by our products at Costco when we would travel back to see our parents. there is no deposit requirement here. So we would cash in those and get money back.
During my childhood up until after college we would collect those bottle from the bar-ditches take them to any store get 2 to 5 cents from the cashier then buy candy and later gas.