by Jay Arthur

Glass don't get no respect, today.
There was a time when glass bottles and jars were something to treasure, a wonder of engineering.  They were sturdy, elegant and about as environmentally friendly as it could get at the time.
Glass is classy. While there may be moves to produce beer in plastic, and pop in plastic, the idea of wine in a plastic container--be it bottle or pouch--is just too tacky for most of us. Some American beer companies are now putting their suds into PET plastic bottles. It's not as if taste considerations would be an issue with the mass-produced stuff, so it makes sense in a way. It certainly is preferable to the enormous environmental cost of virgin aluminum cans.
The quaint old Canadian notion of continuing to put beer into a glass bottle probably doesn't improve the flavour, but at least no one is asking the taxpayer to cover the cost of recovering the containers. Whatever the motivation for the use of refillable bottles may be, there is no arguing the environmental wisdom and the efficiency and desirability of the deposit-return system. And there is no denying the value of the little brown glass bottle, which epitomizes the system and looks down with disdain on the less then ideal performance of the recycled glass containers in the other system.
The irony is that Coca Cola is making its plastic pop bottles as closely as it can to the old glass bottles. It's a tribute to days gone by, and the refillable aspect is quietly forgotten.
For those operating recycling programs, glass is a big problem. While intact, a glass container is a thing of beauty, with a distinct value. Once it works its way through a recycling program it is just a pile of broken glass, with minimal value and lots of cost implications.
The recent collapse of the market for green glass in Ontario (see story on Page 3/6) means that most of those broken wine bottles won't even end up as new containers any more.
Their destiny now is as road bed, sand-blasting medium or other low-grade substitutes, which is not much of a prospect for an ambitious glass bottle.

Now, various players are scrambling to do something with the molehills of green glass that are gradually becoming mountains.
Meanwhile, where is the Province?
The Ontario Government has this thing it calls the Environmental Levy and it means for every non-refillable bottle of wine you pick up at the liquor store, a dime goes into a piggy bank on the desk of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.
Intended as a measure to promote the reuse of containers, the revenue from the levy stays in general revenues, making it very handy for financing the next feel-good advertising campaign or even the next provincial tax cut. It sure as hell doesn't get as far as the environment ministry.
After some serious talk by the City of Toronto about bringing in deposit-return on liquor bottles a few years back, the Province, which of course runs the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), told the crown corporation to set aside some hush money and give it to municipal recycling programs--for three years. 
At the same time, bureaucrats were busy changing the municipal rule book so the City (or anyone else) could not bring in the system it was planning.
The kicker in all of this is that under the 3Rs Regulations, local governments are obliged to collect green glass for (alleged) recycling, even though it will likely end up as a rather expensive substitute for gravel or sand.
Landfilling green glass is not allowed; landfilling green glass in road construction is allowed.
Now here's a thought. What if the wine bottles were made to be refilled and a system set up to collect the empties, wash the empties and sell them back to the wineries? 
The producers would then be able to avoid the 10-cent levy. So, by keeping the same price at the point of purchase, they would have more than $6 million each year to fund the system, and they would save about 30 cents each on the cost of new wine bottles. And the poor municipal taxpayer would save a bundle by not having to manage the empties in the blue box!
This may be too obvious an answer to the current fiasco.

But burying wine bottles  isn't the answer, either.