This is one I have been thinking about for a while (but haven’t found the time to post anything about it). Conveniently, Lloyd Alter at Treehugger took a crack at it with his recent post, More Greenwashing from the LCBO, at Treehugger.com.

…”and this month hit an egregious new low in greenwashing: an entire section of the magazine called “Envirotrends” with the usual suspects like tetrapaks, Wolf Blass in PET bottles, and a new low: Australian Billygoat Hill Shiraz in 250ml cans. Where, this side of the 1980 Berlin wall, do you find the government controlling distribution, owning the press and practicing Newspeak that makes recyclable glass bad, small aluminum cans and non-recyclable tetrapaks good?”

The LCBO has also recently introduced a bag it back program to get consumers Ontario consumers of spirits and wines to bring back bottles for a refund. I haven’t actually returned any bottles yet under the new program. They are stacking up next to the recycling bin waiting for the trip. Then again since we have no car and move around town on foot or by bike it is not really all that convenient to make the trip back to the beer store (that’s right beer store, the LCBO is working with the gove’t owned chain of beer stores (which have the capacity to accept bottle returns) under this program. This could be trouble? (think long line of anxious beer drinkers waiting as I count out my spent bottles of merlot and shiraz.) It could be good to, it might bring together otherwise separate social-economic classes in discussion as they wait in the bottle return line.

I have been thinking about just leaving my returnable liquor and wine bottles at the curb in their bright blue bag it back bag. The idea being that someone who needs the dimes more than I can have them to return.

This reminds me a lot of a sub culture I witnessed in Vancouver a few years back. Many residents left their returnable bottles at the curb for “pickup” by a group of entrepreneurial but otherwise hard luck residents of the city. This developed into a number of beneficial support programs for addiction, job training …. but I haven’t the time to find you all the links (try googling it!)

This leads to my last thought which has to do with why the LCBO has moved to a bottle return program. Is it an economic or environmental motive?

According to the bag it back site…(I added the bold!)

“The Ontario Deposit Return Program has one simple goal: to help protect the environment. While the Blue Box has been — and will continue to be — an effective method of recovering recyclable material, the Ontario Deposit Return program will boost recovery rates to an even higher level. The best part is that it’s easy for you to make a difference. All you have to do is bring your empty eligible wine, beer and spirit containers to The Beer Store (or other designated Bulk Return Locations) and claim a full refund of your deposit.”

They further go on to add that the new containers collected by the program will be cleaner and colour separated

“The 80 million containers we’ll collect each year under the new system will be cleaner and colour separated. The Ontario Deposit Return Program will ensure that more glass will be recycled into high value products (bottles or fibreglass) rather than used as road aggregate or landfilled due to contamination.

The new program’s deposit incentive will also enhance the Blue Box by increasing the number of containers that are recycled, including about 25,000 to 30,000 additional tonnes of glass from landfill annually — the equivalent of about 80 million bottles. This represents a 32 to 38 per cent increase over the approximately 78,000 tonnes of wine, beer and spirit containers currently being recycled through the Blue Box program and by licensed restaurants and bars.”

After I get around to making my first “bag it back” return I will update this post with any new info I may have.