DISQUS

danielharan · 5 months ago

I am using fewer disposable plastic bags as a result, but I realize it's all theater. Metro could show a real commitment to reduce its environmental impact by using doors on their refrigerated display cases and changing their procurement policies. Plastic bags are a small part of a grocery stores' impact, but they're the part that's easiest to blame on the customers.

I like the idea of a deposit/nudge for bottled water, since it avoids the green authoritarian tendencies too often displayed by people in this debate.

Tap water often tastes horrid. And if the alternative is Coke, the result is using more sugar which also required water to grow. Restricting people's choice in those circumstances can only backfire.

tpurves · 5 months ago

Except at that rate people would be trucking container loads of plastic bottles to the province from all over north America...

David Eaves · 5 months ago

Thom, I couldn't tell if you were joking. I'm not sure that people would truck empty bottles to Canada for a 25 cent deposit... once you factor in transport costs that equation falls apart pretty quickly. Even at one $ a bottle, I suspect the equation doesn't work - the yields would probably be negative (unless, I guess, if you lived right over the border and even then...)

One area where higher deposit costs might have a perverse negative effect is those who collect them for income. At the moment there is a cost/benefit ratio in which stealing collected bottles probably doesn't yield a sufficient profit to make the physical risk and negative reputation worthwhile.

This stability allows people to collect disposed containers safely and allows programs like United We Can to function and offer a critical service to a marginalized community. However, if empty bottles had more significant value, that calculus could change - having a number of empty bottles would be valuable and might actually put someone collecting them in greater physical danger. Again, this is idle speculation and the point at which that calculus shifts is totally unknown to me.

tpurves · 5 months ago

Sometimes I lose track I myself. I think the landed cost of a plastic bottle from china or wherever they are manufactured is pretty low, certainly a good margin less than 30cents, one could cut out the middleman and cost the province a lot of money. If I was making a valid semi-serious point, it was about finding the right balance point between sufficient incentive and a market distortion or other unintended consequences of a price too high.

It's really remarkable how successful the 5cent bags were in Toronto. Just 5cents was enough to tip the balance at *every* merchant from the default being a bag to the default being you have to ask for one. Just look at organ donation rates, tipping from an opt-in to an opt-out default is sometimes all it takes for 70% swing in behaviour.

Water bottles are tricky though, they have value beyond the water, they are portable, reseal-able and trustable to be fresh/clean water.

and, as you suggest, why pick on the water bottles? coke is almost entirely water too only adulterated with a dollop of fairly unhealthy syrup and coloring.

If we're acting in the public as well as environmental interest, shouldn't we be taxing every plastic bottle beverage *except* pure water? wouldn't that be progress on both fronts?

CharlesGYF · 5 months ago

I'm all for it. Now, can you help get it passed in Vancouver?

RickWeiss · 5 months ago

I think the success of the bag campaign is that it was a separate charge. Maybe an non-refundable $.05 charge per bottle would be the most effective to dissuade people from buying unnecessary bottled water.

That said, I don't see the issue being people who get thirsty while walking down the street and stop at the corner store for a bottle of water. It's those who buy cases of water bottles and drink 5 non-refillable bottles a day.

Larger refillable containers, or in-home filters are the way to go.