Why we need deposits on everything
We have to fight back against the onslaught of single-use packaging and fix the systems we have, starting with the Beer Store.
I have been waiting for this- The headline in the Toronto Star: “Time to ditch bottle deposits.” The online version is “This Ontario recycling program is a bizarre relic, and Doug Ford should scrap it.” Matt Gurney complains that the bottle return system run by The Beer Store is no longer fit for purpose.
This was inevitable because Ontario Premier Doug Ford has done everything he could to destroy the system, as he does with everything he touches.
Since 1927, the Province of Ontario has had a system where you bought your beer from The Beer Store (formerly Brewers Retail), usually in a standard bottle (formerly known as a “stubby”), usually in a box of twelve with a handle (a “Scarborough Suitcase”). They were always returned for their deposit, and then were washed and refilled.
In 2018, Doug Ford promised to put “beer in every corner store,” calling it “the largest expansion of consumer choice and convenience since the end of prohibition almost 100 years ago.” By 2024, it was everywhere. However, Galen Weston (supermarkets) and Couche-Tard (corner stores) didn’t want the responsibility or cost of dealing with returns and deposits, so people still have to go to the beer store to get their deposit money back. Except that the beer stores with their big parking lots are all being sold off for condominiums, so it is far less convenient. And then everyone is shocked, shocked! to find out that the return rate is down to 75%. And it is almost impossible to find bottles anymore; cans are easier to stock. No matter that they are still mostly lined with gender-bending BPA, and the cans are almost all imported from the USA.
However, to completely destroy the beer store, you have to destroy the recycling system. Enter Matt Gurney in the Star, who complains,
“So here’s an idea. Just throwing it out there. Maybe we should kill this entire program on the grounds that it’s really stupid? Like, gosh, folks. We already have recycling programs. Uptake is admittedly not great; Ontario has a fairly low level of diversion via recycling, with most discarded items ending up in landfills. But this particular “solution” is dumb.”
And why is the uptake in our recycling programs not great? Because there is no incentive. There are no deposits. Gurney continues:
“Still, to illustrate how nuts this is: let’s imagine McDonald’s adds a $1 fee to every drive-through and takeout order, but you get your dollar back if, having enjoyed your Big Mac and McNuggets at home or on the road, you bring your trash back to any McDonald’s location and hand it over…. No one would think that made sense. We’d think anyone proposing this system today were nuts.”
Well, call me nuts. We should have deposits on everything. Every Tim Horton’s and McDonald’s coffee cup, every plastic water bottle and every takeout container.
In Aarhus, Denmark, single-use disposable cups are banned, and everyone drinks their take-out from plastic cups with a 70-cent deposit. There are machines all over town that give you your money back.
In Catalonia, Spain, the beaches are littered with cigarette butts (as is every street in Toronto where Matt Gurney and I live), so they have proposed a 20-cent deposit on every cigarette butt. “The government plans to pay 4 Euros to anyone who turns in a pack’s worth of cigarette butts at a recycling point. A 20-cent levy on every cigarette will cover the costs associated with this scheme. This would almost double the price of a pack of Marlboro Reds.”
And Gurney thinks it would be nuts to put a deposit on McDonald’s packaging? He then complains that the bottle return is a parallel system to the blue bins.
“Let’s kill the program, scrap the deposits and spend what money the government has already collected on advertisements reminding people to put their empties in the blue bin… What doesn’t work is what we’ve got now. Our nominally conservative premier should see that this entire program is ridiculous. And he should kill it.”
But what we’ve got now doesn’t work because of our idiot premier. They did not used to be parallel systems; the blue box was for recycling, and the beer store was for refilling, an entirely different thing.
What we need to do now is prioritize refillable bottles instead of toxic American cans, and not stop there; we should put deposits on everything, every Tim Horton’s coffee cup and every Uber Eats plastic food takeout container. Hell, let’s put a deposit on every cigarette butt here, too; this city is a disgusting mess every spring.
Unfortunately, it won’t happen in Doug Ford’s Ontario; single-use plastics are solid fossil fuels, and he is Premier Enbridge. I suspect that Matt Gurney is just a bit ahead of Doug on this issue. Doug Ford has almost destroyed the system now and has a few more years to finish the job.
How we got here:
Your government in Ontario is not as bad as our government in Washington, DC. Almost, but it is hard to beat a narcissistic sociopath with Machiavellian approaches to nearly everything, surrounded by alcoholics, grifters, and shamelessly corrupt billionaires. Doug Ford is merely incompetent and stupid. How do we get leaders who are so bad when we have democratic election processes? Propaganda I suppose. I hope we make it to the next election here, but my hope is shrinking with a senseless war and a corporate profit boom supplying kickbacks to the source of the problem. At least it is raining. We have a severe drought in Virginia, not extreme like south Georgia and Florida, but bad enough. Climate change anyone? With deniers in charge!? Oh, Good grief.
Returning beer bottles wasn't that hard. Doesn't every beer drinker return frequently to the beer store? Convenience is killing the planet.