Recycle? Refuse, refuse, refuse
The current program imposes a sin tax, which is a sales tax — the worst and most unjust type of tax in a free enterprise economy.
Several months ago I rejoined the ranks of recyclers, but henceforth my bottles and cans are going back into the garbage.
This isn’t due to a sudden abandonment of environmental concerns. It’s due to the province’s beverage container recycling program being an outright rip-off.
It took a few hours of work in the shed to get a winter’s worth of recyclables sorted — 142 tin cans, 120 glass and plastic bottles, 20 cardboard containers, 5 ½ dozen beer bottles and, pathetically, only seven wine bottles.
Estimated value: $28, give or take a few quarters. Satisfaction value: priceless, as it’s a small contribution to saving the universe’s only inhabited planet.
Except that … no. If there’s anything I’ve hated since being a 10-year-old altar boy, it’s lies, hypocrisy and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The province’s beverage container recycling program involves two of those three.
It also involves manipulation and propaganda, but, this being Newfoundland, those are a given.
When you buy drinks in a plastic or glass bottle, a tin can or cardboard, your receipt lists an eight-cent deposit for each container. Except that it isn’t a deposit. It is a sin tax.
To actually qualify as a deposit, the money you pay must be refunded to you in full when you return the bottle or can or container.
But it isn’t. In manipulative, overly propagandized Newfoundland, consumers receive only five cents for a returned bottle, can or container, an amount that in no way qualifies as a “refund.” It is merely a partial reimbursement of the sin tax charged to you at the cash register.
An eight-cent “deposit” must, by definition, lead to an eightcent refund. If it doesn’t, then the eight-cent charge is a tax, not a deposit, unless you’re willing to embrace Orwellian newspeak for the sake of the planet and accept that five is equal to eight.
The saved recyclables in my shed were worth about $18 upon return, not $28, which I discovered when I went online to see if the depot required containers to be sorted by type — glass in one bag, plastic in another and whatnot.
The recycling depot websites give no explanation for the outright rip-off, not surprisingly.
Enviro-enthusiasts will likely balk at the notion of the threecent difference being of any consequence, and accuse me of not caring enough about Earth’s deplorable condition. I invite them to come over and help me clean out my chicken coop, during which they can explain why they’re not doing their bit to lessen the scourge of factory farming.
The issue is not merely three cents per container. The issue is that the “refund” is only 62 per cent of the amount paid as a “deposit” by the purchaser of the bottle/can/container.
Not only is the wording of the recycling business dishonest, the distribution of the money raised is, to be diplomatic, highly questionable, and, to be undiplomatic, somewhat scandalous.
Would you donate to a charity that took 38 per cent of your contribution and put it toward office and operating expenses rather than toward the good works you intended? Probably not, unless you’re a wealthy do-gooding zealot, which are as rare as flamingos on Fogo.
According to the Multi-materials Stewardship Board’s website, “Last year, the used beverage container recycling program kept 176 million containers out of landfills” — which is terrific environmentally, but less impressive financially. Based on that number, consumers received about $8.8 million in “refunds,” while the MMSB — an agency of the provincial government — banked about $5.3 million.
This “deposit” profit “covers the cost of recycling, including administration, handling, transportation and processing.”
Recyclables are shipped to various places on the mainland to be melted, broken and cut up so the glass, plastic, etc. can be reused in other products. So far, so good.
But let’s at least be honest. The current program imposes a sin tax, which is a sales tax — the worst and most unjust type of tax in a free enterprise economy.
If a recycling program can’t pay for itself with a deposit/ refund system — which Newfoundland’s apparently can’t — it should be subsidized via the province’s general revenues.