LCBO / The Beer Store

[lenaitch]

I still don't get how this empty return is a big thing

For grocery stores, it is a demand on space, storage and handling that they don't seem to want to bear. When virtually all of your product is food stuffs, finding a place to store items of questionable or at least unknown sanitation is a legitimate concern. Making it financially worth their while might make their ears perk up.

People are just going to eat the cost and recycle or throw them in the garbage

That's what I do. For the small amount of beer and liquor bottles we go through a year, I'm not about to find a spot to store them until a trip to a business that I otherwise don't use simply isn't worth it.

For many places in northern Ontario, unless return is convenient, the containers will end up in the landfill. It may surprise many to know that many northern communities simply do no have a recycling program. They have too small a tax base and are too far from a buyer/processor to make it cost effective. Whether that changes with Circular taking over remains to be seen.

 

[gabe]

For grocery stores, it is a demand on space, storage and handling that they don't seem to want to bear. When virtually all of your product is food stuffs, finding a place to store items of questionable or at least unknown sanitation is a legitimate concern. Making it financially worth their while might make their ears perk up.

The grocery stores in the US and rest of the modern world seem to manage just fine with bottle/can returns. Why is it just Ontario that can't do it? In B.C the small corner liquor stores take back empties, including non alcoholic cans and bottles. If they can do it, so can our LCBO's and grocery stores.

 

[gabe]

For context, I used to return all my empties to the Beer Store on Church north of Wellesley, then they steadily closed most of the stores in the area I could walk my returns to. So now I just put them in the recycling, because it would cost me more to get a car than it's worth to recycle some wine bottles. I have no other use for a car. Not sure how a gas station (unless they specifically force the one at Jarvis and Wellesley to accept empties) would help me.

In the US the deposit centers offer free pick up, your empties will be added to your account. My nephew does it in BC, all his empties he gets picked up goes into his account, its all cashless. He can check the app on his phone to see how much he has made off the bottle/can deposits.

 

[evandyk]

Most people in Toronto don't return their empties anyways - they put them on the curb and someone collects and returns them. This is going to make that cottage industry a lot harder on the mostly old, presumably pretty poor, people who do it.

Literally nobody is going to drive their own empties 10 km across town to return them. Most people who live downtown don't go more than 10 km for almost any reason, except to get way out of the city. A 10 km radius from Bloor and Dufferin reaches from the 427 to almost Scarborough, and well north of the 401. I almost never go to those places.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

Most people in Toronto don't return their empties anyways - they put them on the curb and someone collects and returns them. This is going to make that cottage industry a lot harder on the mostly old, presumably pretty poor, people who do it.

Literally nobody is going to drive their own empties 10 km across town to return them. Most people who live downtown don't go more than 10 km for almost any reason, except to get way out of the city. A 10 km radius from Bloor and Dufferin reaches from the 427 to almost Scarborough, and well north of the 401. I almost never go to those places.

This is a result of Premier Doug Ford's fixation on the 1950's world of the "future is the automobile". Ignoring cyclists, transit users, and especially pedestrians (with or without a driver's licence). Doug thinks everyone will be driving, even the drivers with suspended drivers licences (who will drive anyways, with or without a valid licence).

 

[gabe]

This is a result of Premier Doug Ford's fixation on the 1950's world of the "future is the automobile". Ignoring cyclists, transit users, and especially pedestrians (with or without a driver's licence). Doug thinks everyone will be driving, even the the drivers with suspended drivers licences (who will drive anyways, with or without a valid licence).

Dougie is a conservative. wouldn't he be all for the free market private bottle/can redemption centers ? Like in the US and rest of Canada and every where else in the world? It would create a lot of jobs and even help the environment. I don't understand why the Beer Store has such a stronghold on recycling. If they were provincial run like the LCBO i would understand it. But they aren't! They are a 100 % foreign owned company.