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New Recycling fee for milk bottles


ronthecivil

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This is terrible regressive.

 

It adds a tax to milk.

 

It will not encourage me to recycle. I already do. What it does is make me keep empty milk bottles along with the beer ones to recycle.

 

It's not worth the effort. I will instead put them in the trash to keep out the dumpster divers.

 

I have a better idea.

 

Remove the deposit fee on all beverage containers.

 

But keep it as a tax.

 

If there is nothing to return, there will be no dumpster divers.

 

Use the money on supportive housing, food banks, low barrier shelters, etc.

 

it's 2.4 dollars every 24 pack of beer so I would be funding it.

 

This is much more logical.

 

Discussion?

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Not a bad concept, but then you'll have the "don't tax me bro!" bros bro'ing about how they're getting taxed, the taxpayer's federation claiming this is a slippery-slope where once a container tax is implemented, it'll only go up in $$$ and cause grief upon taxpayers, and the anti-poverty advocates advocating for the dumpster divers in the form of "well how are they going to make a living if you take away their only source of income?"

 

(this, instead of the bros and the federation recognizing that not all taxes are bad: after all, infrastructure - which is government's primary responsibility - needs to be paid for somehow (and user fees are just taxes by a different name); and despite the fact that the income of the dumpster divers can replaced with some other mechanism, like universal income and social programs)

 

The only flaw I can see in your plan is that by placing a recycling deposit on the beverage containers, it's meant to incentivize the re-direction of those containers to recycling facilities.  You may see it as taking it out of the blue bin and placing it in storage until it's convenient for you to return the whole lot of them at once, but without the incentive, I'm guessing there are many others who couldn't be bothered to put it in the blue bin in the first place and have already chosen to trash it instead (because it's all the same to them whether they sort it or trash it) vs. giving them the opportunity to get some money back even if it requires them going out of their own way.

 

But - as they say, unintended consequences are bound to happen, and your line of thought is probably one that the people who came up with this recycling deposit plan never thought of.

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Honestly, it's an annoyance for me.  I already go to the bottle depot enough since they started taking in all kinds of plastic bags (not just shopping bags, but chip bags etc).  The bags of plastic fill up my "bottle depot bin" pretty quick, add milk containers and I'm going to have to either get a way bigger bin or it'll be a weekly trip to the bottle depot for me.

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Not sure how practical this would be (or if it's already being done), but I would think that domestic garbage should be processed to separate out stuff that can be recycled or composted vs. stuff that really can't. The tax that Ron suggests could be used to fund that manually-intensive activity.

 

That might even potentially provide jobs for binners, utilizing the skillset that they've honed from diving into dumpsters.  :bigblush:

(actually, I'm only partially joking here)

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6 minutes ago, Heretic said:

So, the homeless, looking for a dollar for a cup of coffee, will no longer be able to return empties for cash?

 

That seems kind of heartless to me.

 

(I donate all my clean empties to a single mom here in Armstrong so she has some extra cash for her and her kid).

Agreed.

 

All my empties go to my local Scout Camp so they can stay open.  They have a drive-through bottle drive once a month and it has been very successful.

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I already recycle milk containers and give away my cans/bottles/containers to whatever homeless person shows up to dig through our bins or local charities/bottle drives. So this change doesn’t make any difference to me.

 

I really don’t understand why you’d put milk containers in the trash purposely hurting our environment because of this new fee.

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So they're finally giving returns for milk eh? 

 

Before I quit back in October I'd spent the last four and a half years working at a bottle depot and you'd be shocked at the number of customers from Alberta who'd fuss over our not giving returns back for milk products. Lot of people are already pretty good about recycling, at least in Nanaimo, but there are lot of folks who will be bringing in milk containers for money going forward.

 

It'll matter to those making the least, you'd be shocked how many regulars we'd have throughout the week. Many we'd see daily. It's those with the least who scrounge and pick up everything the average person isn't going to, those living in poverty are the one's I'd say recycle the most outside the elderly. 

 

It was coming down the pipeline when I left so I'm not surprised. 

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5 minutes ago, DonLever said:

Does the deposit fee include both the plastic milk bottles AND cartons?   Because the new law refer to milk containers.   It does not specify plastic or cardboard.

Looks like it's all types of containers for milk, not just plastic.

 

More info if you scroll down the list of beverage containers at this URL: https://www.return-it.ca/beverage/products/

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