The Bar Towel

Hot off the press - or rather, The Star website:

-----

LCBO eyes returnable bottles
Sep. 6, 2006. 12:13 PM
ROB FERGUSON
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU

The Ontario government is looking at the pros and cons of a deposit-return system for bottles purchased at 600 LCBO stores to keep more waste out of garbage dumps. "I do think we need to do more when it comes to recycling bottles," Premier Dalton McGuinty said today when asked about setting up such a system. Environment Commissioner Gord Miller called for one earlier this week, noting that one-third of bottles sold at LCBO stores end up in garbage dumps, along with about half the plastic containers and aluminum cans and 75 per cent of tetra packs. The problem is that many liquor and wine bottles break in the blue box collection system, mixing coloured and clear glass and making it impossible to turn them into new bottles. As a result, only 1 in 5 discarded bottles from LCBO stores are reborn as new bottles. Environment Minister Laurel Broten said she considers Miller's advice "constructive criticism" and will look into it. "I want to, as all Ontarians do...ensure what I put in my blue box is actually recycled." NDP environment critic Peter Tabuns said he believes there will be more talk than action from the Liberals in regards to a deposit-return system for LCBO products. “They’re not working on it. They’re not thinking about it. It is not a priority.”

-----

I find this line especially interesting:

"...one-third of bottles sold at LCBO stores end up in garbage dumps, along with about half the plastic containers and aluminum cans and 75 per cent of tetra packs"

So much for the environmental friendliness of their wine-in-a-box and canned beer initiatives...

I've always hated the tetra invasion, especially because dimwits think they are better for the environment, when in fact they canot be recycled in a lot of muicipalities. Like London for example.

It's about frikin time!

The LCBO is a well oiled distribution machine, collecting empties is just distribution in reverse. This should not be so hard.

I guess they like the trucks returning to the warehouse empy (or full of cash).

As for the TetraCraps; just another example of over-engineering a simple problem and screwing it up.

Holy Cow!!!!

There are so many problems with these arguments that it is a struggle to bring any logic to this crap.

Tetrapacks are the least of our concerns. Glass bottles have long had metal collars that make them unrecyclable. All cull glass not from a filler is acceptable unless sent to Cornwall Ontario to be dumped in a landfill site neat Camridge

More details in The Star today:

Return of LCBO empties on tap
Beer Store will collect bottles
McGuinty wants more recycling
Sep. 7, 2006. 05:19 AM
ROBERT BENZIE AND ROB FERGUSON
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU

Ontarians will soon be charged a deposit on bottles purchased at the LCBO and will be able to return their booze empties to The Beer Store.

No details were available on how much deposits will be or how quickly the system will be up and running for consumers.

But Premier Dalton McGuinty advised his cabinet yesterday about the ambitious new deposit-return program, sources said. It's a public-private partnership with Brewers' Retail, owned by Labatt, Molson and Sleeman.

Full story here

I was always under the impression that the reason a lot of the glass gets landfilled is because there was not sufficient market for it.

From the Star article, do you not get the impression that McGuinty has no control over the LCBO? Why is it impossible for him to mandate that the LCBO accepts its bottles back? What are we missing here?

He has to get in bed with our foreign owned beer distribution system because his own liquor and beer distribution system has told him to piss off? Very scary.

Rob Creighton wrote:From the Star article, do you not get the impression that McGuinty has no control over the LCBO? Why is it impossible for him to mandate that the LCBO accepts its bottles back? What are we missing here?

He has to get in bed with our foreign owned beer distribution system because his own liquor and beer distribution system has told him to piss off? Very scary.

Where do you get the impression that the LCBO has told the government to 'piss off'? I don't get anything of that sort from the article at all.

The reasoning for the partnership seems to be that it will be easier (and perhaps cheaper) to leaverage off the existing TBS return system rather than building a parallel LCBO system. While I don't really dig the idea of the Big Three making money off of it, I can understand it from an infrastructure and efficency perspective.

Ontarians will soon be charged a deposit on bottles purchased at the LCBO and will be able to return their booze empties to The Beer Store.

Problem is with beer we were already 'being charged a deposit', prix inclusif, so is this not just a fancy way of the Province charging us for the same thing twice? Does anyone really believe the LC were eating the deposit on Urquell empties all those years before the Beer Store made those and others returnable? Gotta wonder at least.

Well as long as they really do retun empties for refilling, that's good.

Belgian wrote:Well as long as they really do return empties for refilling, that's good.

An interesting market has developed in Quebec where bottles can be collected, sorted and washed to be reused. Even some 'one-way' bottles are available.

The only bottle that is collected in Ontario is the evil twist-off industry standard bottle (twist-offs should never be rewashed) but possibly a company will open to wash some of the wine bottles and Euro beer bottles. The micro's could benefit from the 500ml bottle pool.

I have heard that wineries and liquor companies won't used washed because it isn't worth the risk of contaminating a high margin product but at the very least it concentrates the used glass stream so maybe a use can be found for it.

The fact that a government agency can't be held responsible for their waste stream is still baffling to me but I'm sure this "first step" will allow the usual Ontario sheep to line up believing that government is doing the best thing for us. Hey, it will allow TBS to continue to rave about how wonderful and indispensible they are.

Belgian wrote:Problem is with beer we were already 'being charged a deposit', prix inclusif, so is this not just a fancy way of the Province charging us for the same thing twice? Does anyone really believe the LC were eating the deposit on Urquell empties all those years before the Beer Store made those and others returnable? Gotta wonder at least.

As far as I know, the LCBO has only ever charged a deposit on bottles that are returnable at the Beer Store. I would assume that this will continue, and that the new deposit will only be added to the items that were previously non-returnable.

I'm going to guess that a lot more E.D. Smith and Bick's jars and Coke and Pepsi cans end up in landfill than beverage alcohol containers...why are they singling out one industry and giving everyone else a free ride. The Ontario government has for years included an "Environmental Fee" in it's pricing of alcohol even though we all know that it was introduced years ago as simply a price increase disguised as something positive.

esprit wrote:why are they singling out one industry and giving everyone else a free ride. The Ontario government has for years included an "Environmental Fee" in it's pricing of alcohol even though we all know that it was introduced years ago as simply a price increase disguised as something positive.

Because they can. We constantly swallow marginal or meaningless programs from our Ontario leaders that are much more show than substance. That we could ever consider dumping our waste in Michigan is a prime example of ducking the difficult decisions.

As far as I know, the LCBO has only ever charged a deposit on bottles that are returnable at the Beer Store

When Creemore empties were only returnable at the brewery, there appeared a 'deposit' charge on the LCBO receipt so yes in some cases they were forthcoming in telling us.

But what I'm saying is, for other products the LC were probably hiding the non-refundable 'deposit' in the price to dodge the inconvenience of returnable empties, simply a decision of expediency. Would not be atypical of them. I'd certainly like them to prove otherwise but we may never know.

As far as wine bottles, I would be VERY jittery buying used glass containers. But - at least concentrating the waste would make sense - a private business could recycle the material we're making an effort to reclaim. At present the BlueBox-To-Landfill nonsense is just an expensive lie of our government.

Belgian wrote:

As far as wine bottles, I would be VERY jittery buying used glass containers. But - at least concentrating the waste would make sense - a private business could recycle the material we're making an effort to reclaim. At present the BlueBox-To-Landfill nonsense is just an expensive lie of our government.

Its not practical to return spirits bottles as the distance to transport them back to the originators would outweigh any value in reusing them. Not sure about wine... Why would reusing awine bottle be any more troublesome than a beer bottle? it would still get inspected and what not im sure.