Editor:
Re: U.S. recyclables put depot in bind, June 10.
Bottle-depot owner Heimin Lee’s story about recycling problems reminds me of my recent run-in with the BC Liquor Distribution Branch.
I am concerned about our environment and always try to do my best at reducing, reusing and recycling, so imagine my chagrin when I took a couple of dozen used wine bottles to the liquor store only to have half of them rejected because they had American labels on them.
I told the clerk I wasn’t interested in the refund; I simply wanted to have the bottles recycled.
Still rejected, I wrote to someone in the distribution branch’s environmental-initiatives department asking for an explanation, using the perhaps naive assumption that a bottle is a bottle is a bottle, so what difference does it make which label is on it?
Needless to say, I got no reply.
Isn’t it time someone sent us an explanation from ‘on high’ as to the government’s position on what is, and what isn’t, recyclable?
Jim Armstrong, Surrey
• • •
It is important to clarify some points about Multi-Material BC’s packaging and printed-paper recycling program.
Beverage containers – such as those for pop, juice and alcohol – are covered under a different schedule of B.C.’s recycling regulation, and are part of a different extended producer-responsibility program, than packaging and printed paper, the materials accepted in MMBC’s program. Examples of containers accepted in MMBC’s include pickle jars, milk cartons and metal cans.
None of the material provided by MMBC to the public or to our depot collectors has indicated that beverage containers are accepted in our program.
Allen Langdon, Multi-Material BC
