People who live in Ontario really appreciate a good deposit-return program. Poll after poll confirms that we’d like to see the program we have – for alcoholic beverages – expanded to include non-alcoholic beverages as well. And this is no baseless wish. We’ve been very good at taking back our alcohol empties to the local Beer Store for decades. We only wish we could return all of our containers this way.
But there is a serious threat to the existing deposit system for alcohol on the horizon. In his rush to boost alcohol sales in grocery and convenience stores, Doug Ford is letting retailers off the hook for taking back our empties. And now Beer Stores are closing, leaving some communities with no place to return their containers. This is bad. An effective deposit system only works when people have reasonable access to places to return their empties and redeem the deposit they paid when they bought the beverage.
Over the last century, beer drinkers have returned nearly all the refillable beer bottles they buy. And the return rates for other glass bottles and metal cans included in the deposit program are close to 80 per cent. The Beer Store takes the empties – along with any packaging the drinks were sold in – and sorts them into orderly shipments. The reusables get sent back to breweries where they are washed and refilled. The rest of the sorted material is sold to recyclers who turn them back into packaging and other material. By contrast, “blue box” curbside recycling for non-alcoholic beverages collects and recycles less than half of those containers.
The success of the deposit program – and many others like it around the world – compared to the blue box is the big reason we have been pushing to expand deposit return to ALL beverages in Ontario. An effective deposit system keeps billions of refillable and recyclable containers from contaminating parks, beaches and roadsides and filling dumps and waste incinerators. As we’ve said before, deposit return is common sense.
The deal for expanded alcohol sales in Ontario – at least on paper – is that any large grocery retailer that sells beer and wine will have to take back empties by January 2026. Large grocery stores that sell alcohol and are more than five kilometres from a Beer Store that was open as of last October are supposed to be accepting returns already. So far, we’ve only found one grocery store that is actually accepting them – a Great Canadian Superstore in Wasaga Beach. Where are the others?
The province doesn’t appear to be enforcing grocers’ return obligations, which were already only based on the Beer Stores open last fall. Since then nearly 30 Beer Stores have closed, leaving people in those towns and neighbourhoods holding the can. If you live in Westport, Chapleau or Stratford, you probably don’t have a convenient way to return your empties and get your deposit back. And unless the province starts enforcing the rules for grocers, access to a return location will get worse and worse across the province as more Beer Store locations close. The only way these communities will have options is if the province starts making the grocers accept returns.
Sadly, the major grocery retailers have dropped the ball when it comes to taking back our empties, and even oppose expansion of deposit return precisely because they don’t want to be bothered with taking back our water, pop and juice empties. It’s not that surprising they’re shirking responsibility for taking back alcohol empties.
And that’s a shame because elsewhere in the world – including right across the border in Quebec – retailers have long shown that taking back empties can be a normal way of business for grocers. Take Denmark, home of the newest Loblaw CEO Per Bank. It has had a successful deposit system – with returns at grocery stores – for many years. If Bank truly wants to make us “love Loblaws again” in Ontario, he should embrace what he practiced as a retail executive in Denmark to help protect and expand deposit return.
But because retailers are unlikely to do it on their own, the provincial government must enforce their own rules to ensure retailers hold up their end of the bargain when it comes to selling booze in their stores. They have to start taking back empties – and sooner rather than later so that people in Ontario don’t lose access to return locations where they can get their deposit back.
