Ontario government breaking deal with Beer Store to expand sales to corner stores.
At first glance, this headline might seem like a business story and good news, especially if you’re a beer drinker or if you think it’s about time we dealt with this multinational monopoly called the Beer Store. But take a second glance, there’s also an environmental twist.
The Beer Store
The 450- outlet Beer Store is co-owned by Labatt, Molson and Sleeman breweries along with a few other small Ontario brewers. It signed a 10-year agreement in 2015 with the Ontario government that allows beer (and wine) to be sold outside of the Beer Store chain in certain grocery stores. The Ontario government wants to rip up that contract and allow beer to be sold in corner stores. The Beer Store is not happy.
Container return programs
The Beer Store has operated a container return system for its own beer containers since 1927.
Since 2007, through another agreement with the Ontario government, it also takes back and refunds deposits on all wine, spirit and cooler containers sold in Ontario.
Here are a few facts and figures from the Beer Store’s 2018 Stewardship Report.
- More than 1.88 billion beverage alcohol containers were collected from Ontario consumers
- The recovery rate for beer containers is 87%
- 96% of all refillable beer bottles sold in Ontario were returned
- Refillable beer bottles are reused an average of 15 times before being recycled into new glass bottles
- 81% of wine, spirit, cooler and non-beer Store listed beer containers were recovered.
- Over 208,000 tonnes of GHG emissions were avoided as a result of these programs – equivalent to taking 44,236 cars off Ontario’s roads.
This is considered one of the most successful return systems in North America and a great example of a circular economy in action where products and packaging are designed to minimize waste and be reused for as long as possible and then recovered, recycled and reintegrated back into production.
Here’s hoping the government’s plans to ax the 2015 agreement don’t mess with the return program.
