COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL OCTOBER 24, 2018
11A
Off beat Oregon: Stubbornness led to Oregon’s ‘Bottle Bill’
By Finn JD John
For The Sentinel
L
ongtime
Oregonians
may remember a time,
in the mid-1970s, when
the “Welcome to Oregon”
signs at the state’s southern
border were superfl uous. One
could tell the diff erence be-
tween Oregon and California
by the amount of litter on the
side of the road.
Th e diff erence had mostly
vanished by the mid-1980s;
by then California litter lev-
els had dropped to match.
But during the time it existed,
the phenomenon was — ac-
cording to those old enough
to remember it — stark and
startling.
Social scientists never stud-
ied this, of course. But its
most likely explanation will be
found in Richard Th aler and
Cass Sunstein’s book, “Nudge.”
In it, Heath points out that
when an authority wants to
encourage diff erent behavior,
it can change the “choice ar-
chitecture” so that although
people still have just as many
choices as before, the “right”
choice is easier to make, or
more obviously better, or fi ts
in with established habits.
Th eir example is making
organ donation an “opt-out”
rather than an “opt-in” choice
when people apply for drivers’
licenses. It’s still your choice;
but if you don’t much care one
way or the other, you’re a do-
nor rather than a non-donor.
Most likely, Oregonians in
1978 littered less than Califor-
nians because they had been
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nudged, and Californians had
not (yet). Th e default behavior
for the average Oregonian was
to stick that empty beer or pop
can into the back seat to dis-
pose of it later; the default for
the average Californian was
to toss it out a window — just
as it had been for the average
Oregonian before the nudge.
And with the habit of hang-
ing onto pop cans came the
habit of hanging onto other
litter as well, reinforced by the
same public-service advertis-
ing campaigns that had been
largely ineff ective before that
nudge came.
Th is nudge had been deliv-
ered in 1971, when the Or-
egon State Legislature over-
came the ferocious resistance
of the beverage and bever-
age-container industries and
passed the nation’s fi rst bot-
tle-deposit law. It was virtual-
ly bulldozed into the Legisla-
ture by a laconic square-jawed
logging-equipment salesman
named Richard Chambers;
and despite the resistance, its
supporters managed to keep
it alive long enough to be no-
ticed and adopted by legend-
ary Oregon governor Tom
McCall.
No multi-billion-dollar in-
dustry stood a chance against
those two.
Fo o d
Beer
Wine R
Cider
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418 A St., Springfi eld, OR 97477 • 541-968-2403
ichard Chambers was a
near-perfect example of
a classic sort of mid-century
Oregon man: independent,
stoic, unostentatious, and
utterly unimpressed with
things like prestige and status.
He grew up in Salem, then
dropped out of college aft er
one year to join the Navy.
Th at didn’t last long; one
day an offi cer dressed him
down for some silly violation,
and Chambers cold-cocked
him with one punch. Th e
Navy decided it was better off
without him, so he went into
the Merchant Marine service.
By the mid-1960s he was
back in Salem, working as a
salesman for a logging-equip-
ment company and diving
into the wilderness with his
family — he was married by
now, with three kids — every
chance he could.
Always he would come back
from these hiking and kay-
aking adventures with bags
and bags of garbage that he’d
picked up along the trails.
“Litter drove him wild,” his
daughter, Victoria Berger,
told writer Brent Walth. “He’d
come back with these bags
and wave them and say, ‘Why
do people have to do this?’”
Th en one day, while staying
at the family’s beach cabin in
Pacifi c City and just back from
his customary early-morning
walk on Nestucca Spit, Cham-
bers opened a newspaper and
learned that activists in Brit-
ish Columbia were pushing
a law that would ban non-re-
turnable bottles and cans. He
immediately bounded to the
telephone and called State
Rep. Paul Hanneman, who
happened to be a friend of his.
Hanneman promised to in-
troduce a bill in the next Leg-
islative session. Th at would be
1969.
Chambers didn’t wait. He
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knew the bill would have
plenty of competition for
House members’ attention —
nearly 2,000 were introduced,
as it turned out — and he also
knew that most legislators’
fi rst response to his bill would
be to think it trivial. So he got
busy coordinating and fi nanc-
ing a sort of “Grassroots Cam-
paign of One.”
First he educated himself by
requesting information from
the bottlers and manufactur-
ers who would, he knew, be
his main opponents — and
who would never talk to him
once they learned what he
was up to. Once he had all the
information he needed, he
launched his campaign.
Letters from Rich Cham-
bers, typed on diff erent col-
ored paper with diff erent
typewriters and stamped with
odd combinations of postage
and always hand-addressed,
poured forth.
Th e bill did not survive its
baptism of fi re. But it came
close enough to leave the in-
dustrial concerns badly rat-
tled. Indeed, it might have
worked out — but when
Hanneman reached out at the
eleventh hour to McCall to
ask for support, McCall re-
sponded by squashing it with
a letter sent to all parties that
simply said he wanted no bot-
tle legislation “in the current
session.”
Boom: Th e bill was dead.
But Hanneman did not at
fi rst realize why McCall did
it. McCall knew that if he
threw his support behind the
bill now, it might not fl y. Its
momentum was all down-
ward; lawmakers would have
to weasel out of freshly made
promises to constituents and
contributors; it was far from
a sure thing. And if it died
now, it would be very hard to
revive.
So with an eye on 1971, Mc-
Call coyly threw the project
into the freezer and set about
convincing the opposition
that it was actually dead.
He seems to have been pret-
ty successful at this. When,
two years later, it roared back
to life with McCall’s name
emblazoned all over it, it took
the opposition very much by
surprise. Th is would be a sig-
nature piece of legislation for
him, a follow-up to his success
with 1967’s Beach Bill.
Th e industries that opposed
the bottle bill now made some
very signifi cant mistakes —
mostly in the form of hiring
decisions. Th e lobbyists and
political operatives they hired
to represent their interests
in Salem seemed to regard
the Beaver State as a cultural
backwater peopled with igno-
rant hicks, and behaved ac-
cordingly.
“Th ey did the most awful
job,” Sen. Betty Roberts told
Brent Walth. “It was like,
‘Here we are from back in the
East, and this is little dinky
Oregon.’ Th at was their atti-
tude: ‘You don’t understand
this bill. Trust us.’”
Apparently working on the
theory that these rubes were
too ignorant to know better or
too poor to be able to resist the
temptation, several lobbyists
actually off ered to straight-up
pay legislators for “no” votes.
One called Roberts the night
before the vote and promised
“plenty of money for Demo-
cratic candidates” if the bill
died. Roberts, shocked, sim-
ply hung up on him.
Th e same night, Sen. Ted Hal-
lock got a phone call from a
lobbyist who actually named
a fi gure: $5,000 for each “no”
vote. Hallock, doubtless both
off ended by the attempt and
insulted by its diminutive
size, cussed the caller out and
slammed down the phone.
Aft er word of that got
around, there could be no
doubts about the outcome.
And the next day, Oregon
became the fi rst state in the
country to require a deposit
on beverage containers — and
to experience the “halo eff ect”
of this little nudge on its cit-
izens’ attitude toward litter in
general.
As for Richard Chambers,
he refused all requests for
interviews or other forms
of media attention. He just
wanted to live in a less-litter-
strewn state, and he’d gotten
what he wanted, so he was
done. People urged him to
campaign for bottle bills in
other states; Chambers replied
that he didn’t care what other
states did — he’d mind his
own business and they could
mind theirs.
Several years later, McCall
heard he was dying of cancer,
and recognized him with the
state’s new Clean Up Pollution
Award. He must have been
pleased to receive it; but, stoic
to the end, all he would say on
the subject was, “I am in no
way qualifi ed to receive this
award.”
He was almost certainly the
only person alive to hold that
opinion.
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