In Ontario, if you purchase batteries, electronics, household hazardous and special products, lighting, tires, or materials that end up in your Blue Box, you may see an extra charge added to your receipt called an environmental fee, resource recovery fee, environmental handling fee, tire handling fee, eco-fee, recycling fee or something similar.
But then the other part says (emphasis mine):
These fees may be applied at the discretion of businesses to cover their costs related to recycling their products.
The thing is, these “environmental fees” are charged regardless of whether the business incurs any recycling costs. It’s fair enough when it applies to something like a car battery, which contains a lot of lead and which the seller of the new battery actually does have to recycle. But when it’s applied to a wide variety of items that the seller never recycles because the seller never even sees the original item, let alone has possession of it, then that’s just plain extortion – another example of environmentalism gone mad.
In reality most such items are either disposed of in the garbage (for which you pay property taxes) or in recycling facilities to which you take such items (at your expense, and for which you also pay property taxes).
Um, you didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already read in my own cite. Yes, as I said to Spoons, it’s quite clear that the “enviro-fee” amounts are selected and exacted entirely at the seller’s discretion, based on criteria that are entirely opaque to the buyer. Which is, as I noted, just like all the rest of the price that the seller is charging you for the item. Nothing about that seems particularly mysterious to me.
It’s cute how it’s environmentalism that gets blamed for “going mad” rather than a business that gets blamed for inappropriately or excessively charging its customers. That too is part of how we got here in the first place.
i went to a fast food place twice this month, i got bags both times. mcdonald’s had a lovely brown bag with yellow handles (golden arches).
my office building has a food court connected as well as a cafeteria in the office tower. when i go to the cafeteria i bring my own plate. at the food court i believe only subway gives you a bag. the other places (that i go to) ask if you want a bag for xx cents extra. i usually stuff the accouchements in my pockets and carry the bowl, clam shell, pizza box, etc by hand.
IIRC it was take a fistful of laxative pills, then dissolve some tasteless powder in a couple quart bottles of Gatorade, Kool-aid, or whatever non-fizzy drink you preferred. Then over the next couple hours or so, drink the half-gallon of whatever.
Ordinary traditional Gatorade was my choice and I didn’t notice any difference is taste, nor much in texture from the added laxative power. the Gatorade was slightly more viscous with a wee bit of crunchies in the bottom. Which could have been overcome by using a bit more Gatorade. After all, it’s not like you’re trying to ration the liquid.
From what I can tell, paper bags are NOT unavailable. They just have to charge a nominal fee for them (15 cents). I"m sure the micky d employees will soon learn to ask at the order speaker “do you want a paper bag with that”, and customers will get to choose.
This whole “banning paper bags” thing is incorrect.
This has been part of the pro-business model for decades. Blame others for their destructive practices and putting profits ahead of the good of society.
Unless these things substantially help the environment, they are at risk of being labelled greenwashing or taxes.
I’m not against doing things that make a difference, reducing pollution and greenhouse gases, fuel economy, cap-and-trade systems or green marketplaces, better packaging, keeping microplastics out of the water and products which contain them, etc.
But don’t tell me my pizza now comes unboxed. Charge me an extra dollar like you are doing me a favour, or solving the Pacific Garbage Conglomeration, or personally saving the Earth. I understand significant changes involve sacrifices and bags, straws and stir sticks are pretty small potatoes - more convenient than mandatory. Let’s prioritize the more inconvenient things that make a bigger difference.
I wish the environmental movement would learn the concept of Opportunity Cost. It simply is not true that every little thing you can force people to do to help the environment is a good idea, because every intervention makes it less likely that the people will accept the next one.
Squandering political and social capital on ‘feel good’ legislation that doesn’t move the needle on the environment will make it harder to pass legislation that would.
It almost makes me suspect these moves such as the Edmonton disposables ban is actually a trick by the pollution-lovers to foment exactly that pushback.
If the plastics or fossil fuels industry can get enough people angry enough at greenery, well, greenery will disappear as a political force. And then they win.
I am not willing to reuse a straw for the items i use straws for. And bamboo, which is porous, sounds like an especially poor choice for straw material. But to me, “you must use a reusable straw” means either “don’t use straws” or “buy and discard a ‘reusable’ straw each time you REALLY want a straw”. Neither of those is the end of the world, honestly. But i do like drinking my coffee-shop coffee through a straw, and “no straws for you” would make be a little sad. That’s why i was so happy to see a cardboard straw that was only a little soft by the time i finished my coffee, and still had enough rigidness to sweep the remaining foam out of my cup.
I did see an ad for single use straws made of straw, which is honestly kinda intriguing.
Once we all get used to all those accessories being a la carte. Of course each take-out place will include or exclude different items, price them differently, and ask about them (or not) at a different point in the transaction. Adding more friction.
But there is a bright side: the new joke for having a crappy job will be “You want fork with that?” to replace “You want fries with that?”
This is a pious article of faith among government-regulation opponents, which in reality is sometimes true and sometimes completely false. Sometimes regulation imposing small changes, even if initially meeting with resistance, makes it easier to pass subsequent legislation, because it changes the default mindset.
The default mindset that free junk packaging with negative environmental impacts is automatically a part of nearly every retail purchase is part of what needs to be changed. Markets should have solved this problem for us already if they were the reliable engines of progress that regulation opponents like to claim they are, but they’re not, so here we are, bitching about regulation, as usual.
As I said, the eternal whine that THIS particular regulation is bad, and should be discarded in favor of some OTHER unspecified regulation that somehow never gets specified or supported or implemented, is a big part of how we got here.
ALL such regulatory initiatives will AUTOMATICALLY be labeled greenwashing or taxes, irrespective of how much they do or don’t help the environment. As the article I linked is post #200 illustrates, there is a very active and influential industry lobby promoting unnecessary harmful packaging. They are not at all happy at the prospect of selling fewer bags to fast food retailers, and their PR plays a huge role in shaping public discourse.
Just as no claims of environmental benefit from some regulation should ever be unquestioningly accepted at face value without investigation of details, no criticisms of environmental regulation should ever be unquestioningly accepted without investigation either. By the time you’ve heard of any such “controversial” issue, industry’s armies of PR flacks (both the professional ones and the multitudes of naively contrarian unwitting volunteers dutifully parroting their talking points) have already been hard at work moving the needle of popular opinion.
I see that as a win, honestly. When i get takeout food, it’s usually to eat at home. I have forks and big bottles of ketchup and soy sauce. I really don’t like have a lot of bits of junk in the bottom of the bag that i need to throw away. And i already have that friction, because i usually remember to ask places not to give me the extra trash. Or when i forget, it’s just that much more to clean up.
I’ll be sad if paper napkins are outlawed, but I’m delighted if they don’t always show up in my bag, when i don’t even want them.
I substantially never get take-out. If I’m eating restaurant food, even fast food, I’ll eat it right there right then.
So if I ever do do take-out some day, I’ll be completely flummoxed about the expectations, and the staff will be impatient with me for my confusion. That’s where simple is easy. Like we all used to know how to swipe a credit card. Even today, several years after the introduction of chip cards to the oh-so-backwards USA, it’s still a mystery at many CC terminals just exactly when, where and for how long, to tap your card. Is [OK] on the left and [Cancel] on the right or vice versa? Answer is: it depends.
For sure me needing to ask for 1 fork per year saves someone like you throwing away a hundred of them. The net effect on waste is guaranteed 100% positive. The effect on convenience and efficiency at the checkout is more mixed. That would be my only point.
No kidding. When my municipality tried to put regulations on plastic bags in grocery stores some years ago, they were taken to court by the Canadian Plastic Bag Manufacturers Association. Some years later, after much taxpayer money was spent on the court case, the regulations were finally passed. This is what these plastic lobby groups do.
And much like the lobbying groups for fossil fuels, or (in the past) big tobacco, they are quite effective at spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
You misunderstand me good sir. I am not unwilling to change. I am just observing that the purchase process has just been made incrementally more complex. Nothing more is meant.