It's Time for Deposits. On Everything.
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 04.14.07
Perhaps I drink too much beer. I have grown very comfortable with a system where I pay a dime deposit on a bottle and when I want more, I stick the empties in its handy Scarborough Suitcase and take it back to the same place I bought it from. The Beer Store therefore is able to refill 98% of the bottles it sells.
When everyone's knickers were in a twist about mercury in CFLs, I wondered why they don't just put a 25 cent deposit on them and have people bring them back. People do have to replace them, just like the beer bottle, so what is the hassle?
When I read that 350 million batteries are going into the trash in Canada alone, annually leaking "747 tonnes of lead, which is known to impair intelligence in children; 0.5 tonnes of mercury, which can damage the human nervous system; and 287 tonnes of nickel, 543 tonnes of zinc, and 3,501 tonnes of manganese," I wonder why we can't exchange a dead one for a new one and save the deposit. After all, you need to replace it so if you are careful, you only pay a deposit once. ::the Star
Even coffee cups. In Toronto, our beloved Tim Hortons cups are filling the City's garbage bins to overflowing. Environmentalist City Councillor Gord Perks says there is too much waste and a city audit "makes it clear the extent to which the city of Toronto, both in households, in street cleaning and in our parks, is paying for the fact the province will not regulate packaging and will not make the manufacturers and producers of that waste pay the cost of cleaning it up – which means the property taxpayer has to pay for it (and) we have to spend precious dollars from our parks department." ::The Star Perhaps there should be a dime deposit on every cup and any deposits not returned to the customer should be given to the City.
Recycling on the taxpayers nickel as we do it now not the answer, it is time for producer responsibility and zero waste. Put a deposit on everything from automobiles to small appliances to hamburger clamshells to water bottles to coffee cups and see how much less garbage we have about.
At my company cafeteria, they charge 10 cents per foam takeout container or coffee cup. Given the success some stores have had with charging for plastic bags, if Tim Hortons and Starbucks and others began charging for their paper cups, imagine the impact (or rather, lack thereof). Bruegger's Bagels has an interesting program where you pay $99 for a travel mug, then enjoy unlimited free drinks for the year. The initial price probably puts a lot of people off (though a week ago, they were offering the cups for only $70).
I totally agree! This seems like a very practical step that would make a huge difference. Thanks for the article, it has refreshed my outlook on deposits. The only complaints that people may make is that initial prices of goods would go up, but first of all likely not by much and it would be totally worth it from the environmental standpoint. Second of all, companies would surely save money from this by drastically cutting down the raw materials they require for making their product. This system would force them to better engineer their products for disassembly and reuse, with whoever doing it better ultimately obtaining greater savings. The great free-market machine would continue, this time with waste streams internalized. Deposits will surely by a key component for any zero-waste aspiring society!
What a great article! The principle of zero waste is an important one, and the area that I think needs the most attention relating to it is the electronics industry. I posted on my site about the recent Greenpeace rankings of electronic companies in terms of their environmental impacts and whether they offer take-back schemes, essentially deposits on computer products. If more companies would take the lead on this sort of a program, I think one of the most dangerous types of waste would be greatly reduced. It's well-worth perusing that report if you are in that market for a new computer. I for one am actually going to stop buying Apple products because of their industry worst ranking.
I have a real bugbear about wasteful packaging in supermarkets. The amount of packaging seems to be increasing rather than decreasing. Supermarket commitments to recycle fail to impress me - surely it would be preferable to reduce the volume and weight of packaging in the first place. You can see some photo examples on our blog, TotallyWasted.org
Rob
Awesome post, this is one of the best ideas I've seen on TreeHugger in a while. I nomitate it for Digg! Click here to vote!
I'd love to see something like that. Combine a deposit with a way to make recycling easier, and we'd see more people doing it. No doubt many would complain as well, but such is life. I've even written on my site in the past on how it would be nice to see electronics stores be required to help with the recycling of old electronics.
Regarding battery recycling -- how many people have actually done this? One of my previous employers collected old batteries, and I participated, but it was a relative pain in the neck. Each battery must be individually bagged in a plastic baggy or the terminals must be covered in electrical tape.
A financial inventive like bottle returns helps mitigate the inconvenience of collecting and packaging batteries and other recyclables for return. It's a good idea.
Hm. Do you know what the net environmental impact of doing this would be?
Practically nothing.
Recycling makes very little difference environmentally speaking. The energy used to remelt the class and recast it is about the same as that required to start from scratch with raw materials. And we're not short of sand. Landfills don't do all that much harm.
Similarly, the chemical processes required to turn post-consumer waste back into usable products are dirty, dirty dirty and farmed trees aren't that much of a problem.
The only place it really makes sense is metals.
Recycling as a focus of environmental action is simply a mistake: it's not born out by the actual environmental impact assessments as far as I can tell. I'd be happy to be corrected on this.
So what should you focus on: household energy efficiency. The EPA says that the average American home has 1.9 times the CO2 emissions of a car. Furthermore, home insulation is old, established technology. Buy a hybrid now, and it'll be 20% less efficient than the one you could buy in a couple of years. But insulate your home now, and you can be reasonably certain that you are playing on a level field.
This is not a very exciting measure. It doesn't have the green glitz of mandatory recycling programs.
But it *works.* Compare the difference in energy consumption between Californian homes and homes in the rest of the country. Take a look at energy-efficiency retrofits for office buildings.
Heck, take a look at Wal-Mart's new energy-efficient store plans, and the work they're doing to make existing stores more energy efficient.
Compared to insulating your own home, sealing the windows and doors properly, and switching all of your bulbs to efficient models of one kind or another, recycling is much, much less effective measure.
Focus on what will really help. Energy efficiency at all levels.
I live in NJ, where we have at the curb recycling in my town. It's convenient, but I often let the batteries pile up around my house after they die, meaning that their lead isn't getting in the water, but at the same time, I don't have their useful components getting recycled.
If I could get a deposit at the supermarket when I go to buy new batteries, even if it's $.05 per battery, I'd do it more often. Same with CFL. Next time I know I'm going to Starbucks, I will definitely bring my travel mug (I only drink there to be social with my friends. I normally make coffee at home in my Aeropress.)
Some recycling always makes sense (like recycling Aluminum cans), and others are more problem-prone. But these problems can usually be overcome. Paper recycling requires de-inking, and then one is left over with barrels of heavy metal-containing waste ink. But it does save energy.
With glass recycling, one saves usually about .4kWh per bottle if it is crushed and the material is reused. It's more about saving energy than materials, obviously. But what's really exciting is if you bring the bottle back to the store, they can load the bottle on the same trucks that brought new drinks. Then the bottle ends up back at the bottling plant where it can be sanitized and reused without having to melt it. That sort of reclycling makes some real sense!
Vinay Gupta -
I love your simple approach. Use what's available and established today, applied to the biggest energy hog that individuals own... their home.
We have been doing this in my home since we bought it in August '06. We replaced our 17-year old HVAC system with a 16-SEER, multispeed unit and replaced a 10-year old 50-gal hot water heater with a tankless hot water heater. We got an energy star fridge when we moved in. Projects that remain for '07 include new soffits with continuous venting (improved ventilation), increase attic insulation and add window film to our two sunlights to reduce solar heat gain. Next year, we are going to replace our clothes and dish washers.
We don't need government involvement to improve the efficiency of our homes. If you assume my home was "average" (and being 1976 and inefficient, I would say this would be a safe assumption) and that our upgrades have reduced it's carbon footprint by 40%, or roughly the amount of .75 cars. Last I looked - .75 is WAY better than .2. :) And all these upgrades pay for themselves in the end AND have a total price tag way less than a new vehicle.
I've been closely watching the whole SunCube product... this again could be a very cost effective way to decrease our CO2 footprint. For $20K... we could get a system installed that would take that remaining carbon output and drop it to zero... today, I am unaware of any technology that allows car CO2 to drop to zero. By focusing on the home, where tangible results are easily achieved with very good cost-benefit ratios, we allow the automotive industry to mature it's technologies.
When the time comes to replace our vehicle, we will get the most efficient car practial for us. We are interested in the new VW diesels hitting the market in '08. We are hoping to squeeze a couple more years out of our vehicles... partly because we hate spending money on vehicles that are NOT investments... partly since vehicle efficiencies are increasing so rapidly, we want to see what shakes out.
You comment at the start refering to the Mercury in the CFL's misdiirects the whole article. The biggest issue with the mercury is how to handle it when the dang bulb breaks. Sweeping or vaccuuming only sends the dust flying around the home. The official CDC stance is to treat the broken bulbs as hazardous waste. How am I supposed to do that without shutting down my home and hiring an expensive clean up crew?
The deposit idea is a good one, but it will not solve the Mercury problem.
Brilliant! I just sent a copy to Toronto's Mayor David Miller, Toronto City Councillor Gord Perks and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. I encourage you all to do the same and let's see what they respond with. Their email addresses are:
mayor_miller@toronto.ca, councillor_perks@toronto.ca, dmcguinty.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org
Vinay Gupta:
I think you may have missed the point about glass bottles - the issue is that they need to be reused (refilled) as opposed to recycled.
In the UK almost everyone used to have milk delivered to the door in glass bottles. The next day the milkman would take the empty bottles away to be refilled. This also used apply to glass pop bottles.
Nowadays we just buy our milk from the supermarket in plastic bottles and (hopefully) recycle them. I consider this a fairly massive backwards step and I don't see why we can't take glass bottles back to the supermarket to be refilled.
However recycling glass bottles them is still preferable to sending them to a landfill site though - if they really cannot be reused.
I agree with what other commenters are saying about energy efficiency and have energy saving products where possible. However there is more to being green than just saving energy, and though you may be buying a replacement product that uses less energy, but did you take into account the amount of energy needed to produce it, or where your old one is going to end up?
I want to see products that are designed to be energy efficient, good quality and repairable, and therefore do not automatically need to be replaced every few years. Manufacturers build products with "planned obselecance" in mind because they need to know that they will still be in business in a few years time. The iPod is a particulary good example of this, with it's non user replaceable batteries. Something needs to be done to tackle this problem, legislation perhaps.