LCBO considering returnable bottles

[downtown drinker]

While "returnable" is a handy catch phrase that on the surface sounds great, this would also amount to an effective tax on non-car owning urbanites. I'm a proud pedestrian/transit rider and taking beer bottles back to the (horrible-and-usually-shunned) Beer Store is already bad enough. Add wine and liquor bottles to that burden and it'll become a full-fledged pain in the butt.

[Belgian]

As far as wine bottles, I would be VERY jittery buying used glass containers...

...Why would reusing a wine bottle be any more troublesome than a beer bottle? it would still get inspected and what not im sure.

Because of the greatly increased liability in event of breakage, and questionable longer-term storage stability in the case of any minute infection.

I'd just prefer a virgin, sterile glass bottle - no tiny fractures, and no possibility of making an expensive bottle of wine turn nasty over months and years. But if there WERE such a thing as drinkable everyday cheap wine in Ontario, re-usable bottles would be fine.

I still think serious, dedicated recycling is the best option. We need pre-sorted drop off centers in each neighborhood - brown glass, clear and green, plus metals, each in dedicated drop-off containers. Easier on the pedestrians too. What is lacking in this is not the logic but the political will.

[GregClow]

While "returnable" is a handy catch phrase that on the surface sounds great, this would also amount to an effective tax on non-car owning urbanites. I'm a proud pedestrian/transit rider and taking beer bottles back to the (horrible-and-usually-shunned) Beer Store is already bad enough. Add wine and liquor bottles to that burden and it'll become a full-fledged pain in the butt.

Maybe I'm spoiled because I have an LCBO and a Beer Store within a 10 minute walk from my house, but I don't really see this being a big issue. If you already have a way of bringing the full bottles home from the store, how is taking the empties back any worse?

I suppose it would be a pain if you save them up until you have a huge amount to deal with, but why not bring your empties back each time you go to stock up on new stuff?

[downtown drinker]

Taking back when you buy anew is a fine theory, Greg, and one which would no doubt work if they were talking about receiving the returnable bottles at the LCBO. But they're not. The idea I've heard floated is returning the bottles to the Beer Store, which I almost never patronize and which is for certain a pain to get to.

Besides, returning bottles to the Beer Store would just further entrench that foreign owned beast, and that's not in the best interests of any beer aficionado.

Pretty much every western European city, town and village I've ever visited has big, conveniently placed bins for dumping green, clear and coloured glass, which the citizens unerringly use.

[King Edward]

Currently we can have bottled beers delivered with our kegs or buy them at The Beer Store (BRI). When they (BRI) deliver beer (keg & bottle) they take the empties away and give us the refund against our invoice. Can you imagine how they are going to deal with wine bottles, cooler bottles, spirit bottles etc? It's going to be interesting..................

[John Aitken]

WOW! I never considered the hospitality end of this idea, wonder if they did?

[Tapsucker]

What amazes me most is how the LCBO cannot come up with the logistics to take the returns.

No doubt the Beer Store has a mature process for managing returns, but they can't even use a simple tool like a bar code to ring in an order.

The LCBO has experience not only with this modern inventory tool but also with the huge variety of SKUs and packages they sell. If they can stock the shelves, they should be in a better position to manage the different colours of glass, metal cap rings, etc.

Maybe the Beer Store is planning to charge the government 20K per store, per SKU, to collect the empties!

On the other hand, the LCBO does not have enough basic literacy to read the KEEP REFRIDGERATED label on a beer package - unless Molbats bribes them, of course.

[Rob Creighton]

The LCBO's biggest limitation to doing something so fundementally simple as taking back the packaging they sell is simply a matter of lack of commitment. Look at all of the new stores that are going up. Large stand alone structures with balers that compact their cardboard that are placed outside for pickup.

Sorted glass could easily be crushed in order to avoid the contamination problem. I personally don't believe that rewashing is an option as the manufacturers want nothing to do with it. The glass manufacturers probably also want nothing to do with it because they don't trust it. Apparently, one small chunk of ceramic can screw up a glass furnace for months so the confidence level in the waste glass stream has to be worked on bigtime.

Washing beer bottles requires a common bottle but the environmental costs of washing bottles are outrageous. Heavier bottles cost a fortune to transport and must be shipped back empty - an unnecessary trip. Large amounts of chlorine and caustic go into the water waste stream from bottlewashers that also require huge amounts of energy to run and are very inefficient. These are just some of the problems.

The market in Ontario is quickly swinging to cans for beer (20% growth this year being strongly advoicated by the LCBO). The US and western Canada operate at a 60 to 70% can level and I suspect we will eventually evolve to this level even with the sleazy government can tax.

The striking fact I see every day is the strange way Ontario slowly and awkwardly goes forward. It is frustrating and involves one stupidly contrived political lie after another to allow corporations and politicians to sell ideas that are poorly thought out and doomed to fail, but only after costing us millions if not billions. And yet, change is inevitable and will come anyway. The LCBO is founded on lack of vision under the guise of social responsibility.

[Jon Walker]

One option is to consider using return facilities that are not within the LCBO stores. In BC you can return to the liquor store OR take the bottles to Return-it depos that give you the cash refund. I don't know the logistics or cost of this system but it seems to be working out.

http://www.encorp.ca/cfm/index.cfm

[JerCraigs]

Washing beer bottles requires a common bottle but the environmental costs of washing bottles are outrageous. Heavier bottles cost a fortune to transport and must be shipped back empty - an unnecessary trip. Large amounts of chlorine and caustic go into the water waste stream from bottlewashers that also require huge amounts of energy to run and are very inefficient. These are just some of the problems.

"RDC Environment & Pira International (2003) similarly found that there is no generally preferable rule for refillable or non-refillable use. Their work indicated that single trip bottles are cheaper for internal costs, while the external costs of single trip bottles are always higher except for very long distances (>1380-2490 km) (RDC Environment & Pira International, 2003). In terms of total social costs, a refillable system achieving 20 trips or more was always environmentally preferable regardless of distance traveled (RDC Environment & Pira International, 2003). "


One of the other important factors as noted by Saphire is that the more companies are forced to be responsible for their own waste the more they opt for efficient refillable systems. In Ontario, the government and public have been willing to pay the infrastucture and environmental costs of not refilling (ie. blue box programs etc.). So the companies use non-refillables.

Elsewhere in the world (Europe, Mexico etc) the companies have to pay the costs themselves and use a much higher percentage of refillable containers.

[Bobbyok]

One option is to consider using return facilities that are not within the LCBO stores. In BC you can return to the liquor store OR take the bottles to Return-it depos that give you the cash refund. I don't know the logistics or cost of this system but it seems to be working out.

That's probably similar to how it's done here in Nova Scotia - where surprisingly, the government had the good sense to let the private setcor do it.