This is great and all for the environment but as someone who lives in downtown Portland the effectiveness of this program has actually reduced "quality of life" downtown.

Homelessness has been an issue here for a while, but by making it more economically viable to do bottle deposits this program has created mini hubs for the homeless to converge on.

There is a large Target store downtown with bottle deposit machines, there is usually a group of homeless folks who hang out overnight waiting for the store to open to deposit their goods -- and they leave a trail of trash and needles behind. And generally make it unpleasant to shop at the store.

Bottle deposit isn't really a means of addressing homelessness but it is just another factor when considering how chronic Portland's homeless issue is.