Watch out for the torpedoes when LCBO take-back plan is launched

By Jay Arthur

It has been two months now since Dalton's Big Announcement (known in some circles as "the events of 9/10"), and we all wait eagerly for the report about how it will work.
Well, okay, not all of us.
For most people, the only real change to their lives in Ontario in February will be that they load empty booze bottles into the trunk along with the beer bottles when it's time to take the empties back.
For the 10% or so who don't frequent the beer palace once in a while, I have no doubt there will be no shortage of charities lined up to accept the LCBO empties at a convenient location, or even at the door now that bottle drives have suddenly started looking good again.
I used the overly dramatic reference to a real tragedy in the opening paragraph because there has been so much hyperbole about this decision that it got me thinking.
If you only got your information from the CSR: Corporations Supporting Recycling website (www.csr.org), you'd be getting ready for Armageddon itself.
The troops were fully engaged even before the ink was dry--heck, even before the deal was done.
There was the general himself on TVs across the networks assuring us our beloved blue box was in peril, and that to say glass was being landfilled--oh, the sacrilege!-- was garbage. (The municipalities had said that, but what do they know?)
In addition to the electronic media appearances, not one, but two press releases were quickly sent off. And all this on a weekend. Boy, how much did that cost?
All this, one assumes, was designed to convince the Premier that if he had any plans to embrace deposits, as he had hinted earlier in the week,  the sky would fall, and he'd better think again. Evidently, he did not think again and by the early evening news on Sunday the idea was a reality.
And once announced, the deposit train would be hard to stop.
Nonetheless, more golf games were eschewed and the majority CSR members had no trouble getting WDO to co-

sign a press release complaining that they weren't advised.
I note in Recycling Canada that another CSR spokesperson said there would be an increase in scavenging, dumpster-diving and litter.
Notwithstanding the curious logic that sees deposits increasing litter, as opposed to decreasing it, the message was clearly telling us that the hordes would be at the door.
She also said what at least two press releases had been suggesting been saying, that plans for a new glass processing plant were being shelved, which is interesting. My spies tell me the guy behind that project told a workshop crowd in Toronto in October that he intends to go ahead.
Setting aside the misinformation, one thing is clear from all this. The ace lobbyists were out-lobbied, and that must have hurt. And this, I think, is the reason for all this fear and loathing that we are seeing.
These guys are used to getting their own way.
It was bad enough that the municipalities were getting uppity, issuing position papers and challenging the industry gospel.
Now they had the ear of the Premier, a position strictly reserved for industry lobbyists.
Something had to be done.
And this is why some folks are waiting anxiously to see the LCBO plan for next year's take-back launch. They will be looking to send a torpedo or two in its direction.
Because if it works, there will inevitably be pressure on the other containers in the blue box. If it fails, then the whole notion of deposits in Ontario will be besmirched.
With British Columbia happily operating a blue box program virtually without containers, and enjoying high diversion numbers, there would need to be some major problems in Ontario to ignore such a shining example of efficiency.
And so the pressure is very much on the Province, too.
Having stepped out on this very popular vote-getting deposit limb, it is very much in the Liberals' interest to make sure it works well.
And if that means taking a hard look at the entire Waste Diversion Act and the flawed platform on which is was built, then so be it.