Marisa Endicott, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
It soon will get even harder to score a bit of extra cash in Sonoma County for turning in bottles and cans.
One of the few remaining recycling redemption sites in the area, Brogard, in Windsor, will end its operation Aug. 26 after 19 years. The scrap metal site at the same location, West Coast Metals, will continue to run.
“We’re not really happy about it because we have been a service to the community for so long,” owner Linda Gardner told me, “but just dollar-wise, we cannot keep open losing money every month.”
This is more bad news for consumers already struggling to recoup the 5- or 10-cent fee on containers as California Refund Value redemption centers and retailers have dwindled in recent years. California has lost almost half its container recycling operations in the past decade.
In Sonoma County, 85% of sites have shuttered in the past decade, and in some other Northern California counties, there are none.