Waterloo Region Record

Put some hefty deposits on more packaging to increase recycling

Re: Region preparing for privatization of recycling — Jan. 11

Hopefully, producers will make their packaging universally recycling-friendly.

The big picture remains worrisome. Producers will still push worthless and harmful products on consumers, such as junk food, pop, alcoholic beverages and other products for which the market was created by advertising. This is “engineered consumption” or “manufactured demand.”

Producers have repeatedly lobbied against returnable containers and hefty deposits because they worry about “sticker shock” hurting sales of their highly profitable, inherently useless products.

To really make environmental headway here, we could firmly mandate a hefty deposit on key items like pop cans, pop bottles (and also water bottles), junk-food bags and other packaged-and-marketed goods. Combine this with an efficient returns system, and a $1 deposit on each container would guarantee a 100 per cent return rate.

Even better would be to tightly restrict advertising of products for which the market was created by advertising. Mandating plain, monochrome, unadorned packaging would also help. Michael Frind Waterloo

INSIGHT

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2023-01-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-01-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://waterloorecord.pressreader.com/article/281668259107705

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