Response to Fall 2008 TAPS Editorial

[Derek]

The back page essay is a standard in the magazine biz. Because most people pick up a magazine and thumb from the back, it's often the first thing people see and so is positioned to be an impact piece of some sort. In beer publishing, All About Beer has "It's My Round," Imbibe has "Quench," Draft has "Beer Me," and so on.

The front/first page is prime advertising space as well. I understand why they do it, but I really like to be able to find the table of contents easily. TAPS isn't too bad, and I typically don't mind seeing beer ads. But some magazines give me the urge to rip out all those pages before the TOC and toss them... er... I mean recycle them.

[Jon Walker]

The BC system may work, but I think it'd be a major pain in the ass. I already hate returning just my bottles. It's sad that society won't just recycle (rather than paying a deposit & getting a return). Now that Torontonians have to pay for their garbage removal, perhaps they'll recycle more?

Then there's the question of everyone driving to the depot... is that really more environmentally friendly than having the city pick it up?

As for refilling bottles... doesn't Corona paint their bottles so minimize the cost of reuse? Now there's a quality example.

Derek,

I think you misunderstood. Vancouver has BOTH curbside recycling AND bottle return depots in addition to returning beer and wine at the BC Liquor stores. Put it this way, in Toronto beer and wine/booze bottles rarely end up in landfill since people either refund them or put them in their blue bins and scavengers retrieve most and return them. Same in Vancouver. But one of the major ways the Vancouver system is better than Toronto's is the other containers. You buy a juice bottle or Evian bottle here it's up to individual good will to put it in the blue bin. Trust me, even with pay per volume garbage cans now being implimented there's plenty of folks in my hood (elderly in particular) that can't get their head around recycling and dump all those plastic and glass containers in the trash. If there was a refund process in place for those there would be more incentive to return them or for them to get returned by scavengers. As that site I linked to states the use of these general container deposits sees more than 90% of units sold being reclaimed (not ending up in landfill). These depots also take beer and booze bottles regardless of their origin (try taking your Alesmith bottles to TBS...it's hard enough to get them to take ST that's sold in the LCBO. If they don't honour the refund those bottles could/ often do end up in landfill).

The issue of driving your car to take back refundable items is really a non issue since if you really care about the environment you'd leave refundables at curbside. It takes about ten minutes, day or night, for some eager scavenger in my hood to scoop them into a push powered cart and walk them back to TBS. That's about as green as you can get.

It simply is a better system than ours since it functions in addition to the blue box program and covers a wider assortment of items.

[Derek]

I understand that BC does both & it results in better returns.

Personally, I already recycle & don't need the financial incentive. In the 80's, my family was taking stuff to a depot in Guelph, before they had city recycling in Cambridge.

Now it would be more of a PITA for me to separate other stuff, then drive it to a depot just to get a refund. There's already a city program in place, making life easier.

Unfortunately, a deposit system may be required in our society. It's sad.

[Magni]

It is a shame that a reward system is in place, I had a similar discussion yesterday with the regional sales manager for Hillebrand Winery yesterday about how we require tipping as an incentive between the patron and employee to keep service in check. Also a shame.

Personally I believe that there should be a penalty if anything for not recycling, I mean not that it isn't already a penalty but it's really not a huge amount of money out of my pocket and I often just recycle bottles normally regardless.

[Rob Creighton]

I just found a copy of fall Taps and read the article in question. Bill really does provide the feeling that any change will bring havoc and pain into our world...not!

TBS is an owned, controlled outlet for promoting the big guy beers. The self-serves sold too much small brewery beer and we lined up to join so they eliminated the concept and replaced it with the dreaded 'ice cold express'. Now we have no interest in their system. Go figure.

I would take a direct to retailer option anyday. If we had a few good beer outlets in every city, we would sell much more product than via TBS. Building size and volume to afford the slotting fees of a Zehrs/Sobeys, etc... is a function of regular growth.

There would be a number of smaller stores that would focus on our product just as there are a number of freehouses that serve our keg product now (equally some rocket scientists like the pretend-a-pub option with big brewery beer and marginal imports and some actually like local beers with fresher, fuller flavours).

The reality is we are severely limited by the distribution system now and it and its 7000 jobs have to drastically change or disappear. It's their choice.

[JerCraigs]

in Toronto beer and wine/booze bottles rarely end up in landfill since people either refund them or put them in their blue bins and scavengers retrieve most and return them.

Thats not entirely true. I am not sure of the current situation but I believe that for periods in the past the green glass bottles were in fact getting landfilled because there was no market for the recycled glass.

I wrote a paper on this recently and as Steven noted in his post the distance traveled by the heavier reusable bottles makes a significant difference. Life cycle assessments have often shown that reusables are dramatically better within certain distances traveled, at which point single use or refillable PET bottles actually make the most sense (due to the low weight).

Its also interesting to note that in Ontario where the taxpayers foot the bulk of the bill for the blue box, pop manufacturers largely use aluminum or single use PET, but in areas such as Mexico where they pay the costs themselves they use refillables.

[Jon Walker]

Green glass is indeed harder to recycle however new initiatives are underway in many countries to reuse green glass by making alternate products from it (glassware, jewelry etc.) or encouraging foreign wine makers to ship product here in bulk and bottle domestically using our recycled green bottles. You are right that some of it is getting into landfill while a lot of it is ending up being stockpiled for (hopefully) future reuse domestically or overseas. I know that in Vancouver coloured glass is a popular element in construction and has been used that way for years.

Regardless, the initial point still holds that a dual retail return system (TBS and Refund Depots) would likely increase the amount of more easily reused materials than than the current system the GTA employs.

[SteveB]

We've developed a different alternative to the Beer Store, seeing as they still refuse to give us our bottles back! I think you'll agree this is far superior from a social benefit perspective...

http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=418 ... 1816841569

http://centretownnewsonline.ca/index.ph ... &Itemid=94

[Tapsucker]

Steve, that's way too innovative for this province. If you want it to work, I suggest you don't tell anybody. As soon as the government finds out, they will shut it down.

[SteveB]

That's what they said about our BogWater, too!

[Jon Walker]

We've developed a different alternative to the Beer Store, seeing as they still refuse to give us our bottles back! I think you'll agree this is far superior from a social benefit perspective...

http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=418 ... 1816841569

http://centretownnewsonline.ca/index.ph ... &Itemid=94

I'm curious to know what percentage of these bottles you're getting back?

[Bytowner]

I had meant to comment on that Steve, great work. Beau's is quickly becoming a real important part of the Ottawa community.

[SteveB]

We'll just be starting it this weekend, so we'll have to wait and see...certainly more than we would if we didn't do this though.

We also encourage customers to reuse the bottles themselves, for salad dressing, maple syrop, homebrewing, etc. and many more keep them as keepsakes, but we do get a healthy number coming back to our retail store (we actually get more back than we sell out of the shop), so I'm hopeful that our customers will want to do their part.

Cheers,

Steve

[JerCraigs]

Great idea Steve! I hope it works out well for you!