TORONTO -- It's a typical post-holiday sight along curbs all across the province: blue boxes brimming with all manner of empty cans and bottles, former vessels of Christmas cheer. For years, they've been largely devoid of beer bottles, the vast majority of which go instead to the more than 400 Beer Store outlets across the province, where consumers swap them for a 10-cent deposit refund.
The Beer Store's deposit-return program, which last year collected 100 per cent of the bottles it sold, saves municipalities some $60 million a year in recycling costs, said Jeff Newton, president and chief executive of the Brewers of Canada.
And if the province is to meet its stated target of reducing landfill waste by 60 per cent before 2008, Newton wants other businesses, including the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, to follow the Beer Store's lead.
"Our system embodies the principles of full producer responsibility," Newton said in an interview.
"People are going to have to look for some innovative solutions, and we think there's probably something that can be learned from the approach we're taking."
The Ministry of the Environment announced a waste-reduction plan last month that will see major retailers and other businesses foot half the bill for the blue box program -- some $36 million a year -- beginning in February.
The Beer Store is exempt from the plan, since it operates a program that recycles everything from bottles and cardboard to the plastic film that brewers wrap around their shipments of beer.
"We fund our system 100 per cent; we agree to take back everything we put into the market," Newton said.
"We're going to have to look at other industries looking for similar sorts of approaches to managing their packaging if we're ever going to get to 60 per cent."
The LCBO posted an eighth-straight record year in 1993, generating more than $3 billion in net sales and a $975-million dividend for the Ontario government, said spokesperson Chris Layton.
Beer sales -- domestic as well as premium imported products -- are a growing component of that success, he said.
The LCBO's share of the beer market in Ontario was nine per cent in 1996; today it's nearly twice that.
"The general consumer trend of the last 10 years for beverage alcohol buying has been people trading up to higher-quality, more premium products," Layton said.
"Consumers are much more knowledgeable, and one could argue their tastes are a lot more sophisticated today than they were 10 or 15 years ago. That's a very definite trend."
But as a result of that growth, consumers are faced with a bewildering array of containers, not all of which can be returned or recycled. That often leads to many returnable or recyclable containers going into the trash, Newton said.
WHERE THEY GO
- Beer cases: Most are turned into the inner layer, or flute, of corrugated cardboard. Brampton shingle maker Iko Industries also uses the material for the paper backing on its shingles.
- Aluminum cans: Baled and shipped to the U.S., primarily, where they are melted down and used in new aluminum products, including beverage containers.
- Clear glass bottles: Glass is crushed and melted down for use in new glass containers. In 2002, some was also used as reflective beads in road paint products.
- Green glass bottles: Coming primarily from import brands like Heineken, green glass is also crushed and melted for new containers, but some also is sold for use in fibreglass production and in sandblasting.
- Steel cans and bottle caps: Steel beer cans and mini-kegs are shipped to Hamilton, where they are melted down for use in producing automobile parts, building materials and new cans.
