Grumpy Old Man: Deposit - No Return

Recycle This: Deposit - No Return

You might have gathered I actually am big into the concept of the "Three Rs" of Recycling - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle... at least that is how I think that goes.

It took me a while to get into the habit of taking back bottles for deposit on a regular basis. Before I would let them accumulate and then take them to a bottle depot in my car en-mass. That works when you have a car and room enough to store a trunk load of bottles. When you have to carry the bottles by hand or in a two wheeled grocery cart things are different. So after a while I got into the habit of taking a dozen or so bottles back to the store I bought them at when I went down there to buy stuff. That meant the 7-11 convenience store across the lane from the old Gnomestead. It worked pretty good until I was informed one night that the health board had declared that the store could no longer accept bottles! Now I believe there is actually a provincial law saying that stores have to accept back the bottles that they sell but though I can not be sure - I think there is a thing where the health department trumps the provincial recycling laws...

It is over a kilometre (a bit under a mile) to the nearest recycling depot and though there are two gas stations with convenience stores which are closer, they are under no obligation to take in empty bottles from products sold at other stores. Of course handling empty bottles is a big nuisance for shops with having to store the possibly quite unsanitary containers and deal with exchanging them with the bottler so they aren't about to fight for the consumer's rights.

My eventual solution has been to simply drop the bottles into the recycling bin and ignore the loss of deposit. I know those bottles won't be going with the rest of the recycled bottles in the end because we have far too many "dumpster divers" checking for such fare. I finally realized that 100 bottles - single serving sorts - only have $5 deposit on them and they take up a whole whack of room in my apartment suite. I don't drink nearly that many in a month - I figure so I figure I can eat the loss even on my limited budget. It is far more important to me to get rid of that source of clutter.

But, it does make me a bit bitter about not only paying for the deposit in the first place, but also having to pay an "Enviro Levy" on the product at the grocery stores! I can just consider that my soft-drinks cost more. Now by soft-drink I refer not just to "pop" "soda" or "soda-pop". It includes the iced teas, sparkling waters, flavoured waters, enhanced waters, energy drinks, juices, fruit drinks, and so many other non-alcoholic - non-dairy drinks out there.

I guess they can slap a deposit and enviro-levy on anything if they want.

I guess the deposit does mean that there are "dumpster divers" out there who risk injury and disease to fish bottles out of dumpsters and ditches for a few dollars so perhaps it is a small price to pay for that service? I can live with that. But I would sure hate if that money is going into the pocket of the stores collecting the deposit and not paying it out and not having to cope with the inconvenience of dealing with collecting the bottles.

So I am getting wee bit grumpy about the "Deposit and No Return".

Later!
~ Darrell

PS Getting back to an older issue...

We finally had our recycling totes emptied so we can use them and some "trash-hole" has already dumped their garbage into the "containers" recycling tote. The "newspaper" and "mixed paper" bins are faring only a little better. It does make me do a slow burn and I wish I could somehow educate the "trash-hole" on how to recycle. Perhaps they really do not understand it is a recycling bin? The two bags they dumped are liquor store bags and smell strongly of tobacco ash and make me think they were junk cleaned out of a car or truck.

57.