A study is suggesting Ontarians would like to see the province revisit a deposit-return recycling program for non-alcoholic beverages and juice containers that stalled last summer.
The new poll from Abacus Data shows support is up five per cent year-over-year to 81 per cent in favour of some sort of system to manage empties.
Ontario appeared to be on course last summer with the “Recycle Everywhere” initiative before the Canadian Beverage Container Recycling Association (CBCRA), the agency that had oversight, shelved it citing a need for government policy changes.
“CBCRA has determined there is no viability to continue with the launch of Recycle Everywhere while the Ontario government adjusts the parameters for beverage container producer responsibility and explores a deposit return system for the recovery of non-alcoholic beverage containers,” CBCRA executive director Ken Friesen said in a statement last year.
Ashley Wallace, an associate director with Environmental Defence, says the survey results suggest now is the time to follow up on deposit returns with the Ford government set to earmark costs related to the current blue box program on to retailers and goods producers.
“Ontario actually has the lowest recycling rate for beverage containers in the country and that’s definitely because we don’t have a deposit system, which incentivizes the proper return of the containers,” Wallace explained.
Ontario and Manitoba are the only two provinces in Canada that don’t have a deposit-return system for non-alcoholic beverage containers.
Wallace says return rates for beverage containers in the other provinces ranges between 75 to 90 per cent with Ontario seeing half as much, just over 43 per cent.
“Even our own alcoholic beverage container recycling program … that’s able to achieve closer to an 80 per cent recycling rate,” she said. “So really, deposit systems we know are the best practice.”
Environmental Defence estimates some 1.7 billion drink bottles likely ended up in landfills, incinerators, and the ecosystem last year without a program.
Drink recycling currently falls within the purview of the province’s blue box regulations, which puts most of the recycling costs on manufacturers.
However, Ministry of the Environment spokesperson Gary Wheeler says taxpayers were still on the hook for almost a couple hundred million dollars in 2022 to operate the program.
“For 2022, the last year before local blue box programs started to transition to producer responsibility, the municipal share of program costs was $171 million,” Wheeler said in a statement.
More than half of the Abacus poll respondents, 55 per cent, also wanted the convenience of returning containers to the same merchant they purchased from, such as grocery and convenience stores.
Reverse vending machines are prominent in several European nations, offering the insertion of an empty bottle or aluminum can in exchange for a reward.
However, Wallis says that model could be a hard sell since many stores are not likely to give up that kind of space since they are not manufacturers.
“Unfortunately, we are seeing pushback right now from the grocery stores and from retailers who don’t want to give up their footprint in their stores for this kind of technology, especially because not all of them actually manufacture the containers,” said Wallis.
Last June, Minister of Environment David Piccini engaged stakeholders from the beverage industry, retail, waste collection and environmental organizations to develop a deposit return system for Ontario.
Wheeler says that engagement is still on-going.