About a year into its tenure in Portland, the honeymoon may be over for Seattle-based recycling startup Ridwell.
The company allows customers to self-sort materials that traditional recyclers don’t take so those materials can be reused and recycled. Its white collection boxes have become a common presence on Portland porches, where it has the bulk of its 20,000 tri-county customers.
But as the program has grown and spread, it’s also drawn more attention from local governments. It halted service in unincorporated Clackamas County, which said it lacked a required license. And it sued Washington County’s government after it was briefly barred from operating.
The company ran into fewer conflicts with regulators in its early days, spokesperson Caleb Weaver said, because the concept — home pickup for waste not usually collected by municipal curbside services — was so new.
“We recognize that regulations around recyclable materials weren’t written with the idea of a service like us in mind,” Weaver said, “so it’s not always clear where we fit or where we don’t fit, and we’ve seen this play out in a variety of different ways.”
Washington County, where Ridwell had about 1,600 customers, barred the company this month from collecting material that isn’t accepted by its own recycling program.
Last week Ridwell filed a lawsuit in federal court, saying that by banning the company from operating, the county illegally expanded the monopolies of waste hauling companies, which resulted in financial harm and the landfill dumping of recyclables and reusables.
“We are supportive of appropriate regulations that give local jurisdictions visibility and oversight of services like Ridwell,” Weaver said.
But, according to the company, Washington County’s actions were not appropriate.
Ridwell said they welcome the reprieve but would press on with their legal action because “the temporary rule change does not address the issues raised in the lawsuit” filed last week.
“We applaud the County’s decision to listen to the thousands of residents who demanded access to Ridwell’s service,” Weaver said in a statement Thursday. “With the temporary removal of the threat of fines and enforcement actions, we look forward to helping households in unincorporated Washington County reduce the amount of material unnecessarily being put into the landfill while a permanent solution is reached.”
“So that’s what we’re in the middle of right now,” he said.