Environmental Mercenary

Shortly after moving to Nova Scotia I began to be a little curious about how I could return bottles and cans to get the deposit I had been paying. While I was told that it was possible to return cans, I did not receive was I felt were particularly satisfactory answers. At one point during this time I asked a NSLC clerk where I could return bottles and cans, some of which I was in the midst of purchasing, and he suggested that he had no idea.

Anyway, I eventually figured things out and Neil and I made a trip to the local recycling depot (which is only open from 9 to 4, Monday to Friday) with quite a load, or at least what seemed like a fair bit to transport by foot.

Almost as soon as we entered the facility we observed a major consequence of having a difficult to access deposit system. Most people don't use it, instead they toss their deposit bearing recyclables with their regular recyclables. Recycling bins are then raided by professional can pickers, the group that comprise most of the users of the bottle return depots.

A consequence of this being the way things work is that most people returning bottles have thousands of bottles to return at a time, which can take a fair bit of time to count. When we went the first time we were waiting for about an hour even though there might have only been two or three people in front of us.

Given that we had to each invest over an hour in the whole process and that we received only about $20, Neil was less inclined to save our bottles and cans and instead let the professionals have a chance to get them and return them. I, on the other hand, have been a little more inclined to try to save them and then return them to get the money, which is rightfully ours.

But given that we both knew what an unpleasant experience the returning was likely to be we have been avoiding it for months. The other problem was that neither of us was willing to risk standing in line for an hour to return any less than $20 of bottles or cans, which quite a number of cans. So, consequently, we haven't gone for months, though during this period of time we have been saving our cans diligently.

Over the course of the past few weeks it became apparent that we were approaching a breaking point. We would either need to take our cans to the recycling depot, or find some other way of getting rid of them. Much to my surprise, though maybe I should have figured this out, Neil was not particularly inclined to head back to the recycling depot. I then took responsibility for taking items back to the depot.

Of course, it took me a while to work towards actually taking the cans back once I had assumed responsibility for doing so. I think a few weeks might have been involved. Fortunately, by yesterday I was ready to go and had everything organized and sorted.



Just before making the trip to the recycling depot a friend stopped by briefly and, among other things, noticed my recycling operation. I explained that my plan involved me carrying everything and then walking to the local recycling depot. Not surprisingly, she was a little skeptical of me actually being able to make the trip with such a burden.

After she left and as I was putting on my shoes to head out this friend called me and offered me a ride if I was able to wait until today. Though I had been hoping to use the trip to the recycling depot as a test of my manhood, I quickly realized that accepting the offered ride would really be the most sensible thing to do, so I did.

After accepting the ride I thought I might as well see if I could have actually carried the load I had planned on carrying.



It turns out that it would have been more of a challenge than I expected.

Early this morning, at least as far as my normal schedule is concerned, I loaded up my recyclables in my friend's mother's car and we made the three block journey to the recycling depot.

Almost as soon as we arrived I think that we all noticed the guy sleeping on the ground next to the door, as well as the guy unloading a full mini-van. Moments after we arrived a professional arrived with full capacity shopping cart.

Amazingly, once inside we learned that there was basically no one in front of us. We somehow managed to be the rush. Which was quite good, as by the time the staff were finished counting my stash there were thousands of cans and bottles just waiting to be counted.

The other good news was that I 'made' over $26 (my friend snagged $1.85). I guess I now have some more money to re-invest in beer and future deposits.

Oh, and if it wasn't already clear, I really don't like this bottle deposit system. I think that Nova Scotia should adopt a point of sale approach along the lines of what they have in places like Quebec, Michigan, or New York (not like the one in Newfoundland). Ideally they would even have the automatic return machines as I have seen in some of these jurisdictions. The other thing that I think that they should do is ensure that all NSLC locations take bottle returns. Having a system which, at least from my perspective, seems to be designed to frustrate use is unacceptable.