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.

Royal Bank, the US Government and the almighty dollar

Yesterday I briefly heard about Canadian dual citizens who had their American funds bank accounts closed by Royal Bank. It was suggested that the customers only found out afterwards. Furthermore, it is being reported that US government policy is the impetus for this activity, though I can’t quite understand why any reasonable person or institution would follow along (partly because none of the stories I have read have given any details about the US policies).

Mainly I am not quite sure why the US cares about this practice right now so much that they are causing banks to take this action. Many foreign nationals have been using US currency for years, without the consent of the US government. I would guess that many individuals will continue to do so in the future, even with the implementation of this crack down. Additionally, I am not quite sure how a country can control what happens to its currency once it leaves its borders. If Royal Bank, or any other bank for that matter, would like to offer accounts in foreign currencies it would seem to be up to the bank and the institution issuing their charter, not the country from which the currency originates (though maybe the international and inter-connected nature of the current banking system has caused this to change).

It would be interesting to know if the same rules are being followed in the US. In many ways I would find it hard to believe that the US is able to disallow dual citizens (people who are full US citizens) access to banking services, even if they wouldn’t want them to access these services. It seems somewhat hypocritical to expect more from banks located in foreign nations, though I guess they can boss these banks around without worrying about the constitutionality of the whole thing.

It seems that there is also an element of sloppy reporting in all of this. It was not initially reported that not all dual citizens were not having their US funds accounts shut down. The implication was that it was affecting everyone, something that is clearly not the case (as I haven’t had mine shut down). In stories that came out today it was reported that individuals would be able to have these accounts if they could demonstrate that they resided in Canada (a potentially temporary and possibly meaningless measure).