news
October 22, 2008
Alberta to charge deposit for first time on milk containers
EDMONTON – Alberta will be charging refundable deposits on milk containers starting in June to encourage more recycling.
Consumers will pay 25 cents on a four-litre jug and 10 cents on smaller containers. The province's 200 recycling collection sites will also have to start accepting milk cartons for the first time come June 1.
Environment Minister Rob Renner says he pushed hard for the deposit because recycling of milk cartons lags behind that of other beverage containers.
"I don't think it's any secret that the dairy industry has not been supportive of coming into the system," Renner said Wednesday following a news conference at a new recycling depot in south Edmonton.
"But we feel very strong that this is the right thing to do."
The current recycling rate is 60 per cent on plastic milk jugs and 25 per cent for cardboard cartons. It's up to 90 per cent on cans that have had deposits for years.
"The evidence speaks for itself," said the minister. "The containers that have deposits have a high success rate.
"I think we take the success that we've had with alcohol and soft-drink containers and move it into the dairy side."
The deposit on regular-sized pop, beer and juice cans is also being doubled to a dime starting next month, while the charge on larger containers goes up a nickel to 25 cents.
The new rates cover all types of containers, including pop, juice, beer, wine and spirits.
Alberta's dairy industry has always resisted any attempts to charge a deposit on milk containers, partly because farmers feared it would hurt milk sales.
Brian Miller, president of the Alberta Dairy Council, said Alberta is about to become one of the only places in North America to have a deposit on all milk containers.
"I'm not aware of any deposits in Canada on milk jugs," Miller said in an interview. "A program of this nature, where a whole province is under a deposit for a milk jug, simply doesn't exist."
Miller also said the milk industry is proud of the community-based recycling programs it set up nearly a decade ago.
"We're clearly disappointed as an industry that the government has made this move," he said. "But we'll do our part to work as effectively as we can."
Miller pointed out that consumers will have to find a place to store milk jugs until they make a trip to the depot instead of just including them with their regular recycling picked up with the garbage.
"Of course they're going to find that to be a difficult thing or inconvenient," he said. "It's far easier to use our voluntary system to recycle your containers."
But Renner said Alberta consumers have made it clear that they support the change.
"The public has indicated to us that generally speaking they believe it to be the right thing to do."
The minister has set a target of increasing Alberta's total rate of recycling for all containers to 85 per cent — up from the current 75 per cent, which does not include milk containers.
