In all the fuss about the EcoFee, no one seems to have noticed Orange Drop.
The much maligned EcoFee was a system to have purchasers of household hazardous products pay for the proper disposal of those products, instead of loading the cost on municipalities or future generations. Orange Drop is Stewardship Ontario’s program to help collect and lawfully dispose of such products.
In 2008, Stewardship Ontario began to collect nine types of household hazardous waste – paints, solvents, single use batteries, oil filters and containers, antifreeze, pressurized containers, and fertilizers and pesticides. Orange Drop is an expansion of that program, to add 13 new categories, from batteries to pharmaceuticals, as of July 1, 2010. This means that 22 types of household hazardous wastes can now be returned to 92 recycling depots, 738 retail collection sites, and 2700 pharmacies across Ontario. However, the program cannot operate without funding, which was supposed to come from the EcoFee that was ignominiously canceled last month. Now that Minister Gerretson has lost his post over the EcoFee debacle, there is no obvious source of sensible funding for Orange Drop.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I guess "sensible" is the operative word. I don't begrudge the government charging EcoFees. One way or another we have to pay for the time we rent on Earth. But I do bristle at the thought of paying tax twice for the same service. Municipal taxes are paid for removing the waste. The we will pay the manufacturers to pay the government to remove the waste? Sounds like a bit of double dipping on the government side. I'll pay once for service well rendered, not twice for service that leaves me wondering whether or not I received value.
yes, Gus, but:
1. municipalities don\’t charge enough yet to properly dispose of hazardous products.
2. More important: paying for hazardous waste disposal through taxes subsidizes the worst products, And therefore creates an economic benefit that increases their use. The Eco fee, at the point-of-sale, would do the opposite, and would provide a direct economic benefit to responsible people who do not choose such products.
I think we're singing the same song here Dianne
My last statement is that I would pay for the service well rendered. So, in a utopian world, municipalities would not have to subsidize environmentally poor products and could therefore lower taxes that went to dealing with the hazardous waste (biting my tongue from being cynical here). Companies who produced environmentally sound products would have a competitive advantage over those who don't. Unfortunately, the required change is a societal one; one that North Americans (in general) are at this point unwilling to make.
Dianne, you and I will have to "agree to disagree" on this one. I have to write this in two parts because of your blog software. There's no reason that producers/brand owners can't pay for the program entirely. They can either absorb the cost or pass some or all of it along to consumers in higher prices. The entire point of extended producer responsibility is to cause companies to internalize costs and not externalize them onto taxpayers or the environment. In most cases cost internalization would only add a few cents to the retail price of a given unit of a product with hazardous or toxic contents, but even if the cost is higher, so what? It's "the cost" and market forces will, over time, lead to more eco-economic efficiencies, as long as the wastes are disposed of properly and the costs are born by the companies, since they're in the best position to effect change (including package redesign and replacement of toxic materials with less toxic materials that do the same job).
Part two of my comment:
The debate over "visible fees" is a canard; in fact, the producers and retailers engaged in a game of trying to pass along costs visibly, only to screw it up and confuse everyone (including themselves) and create the perception that the fees are a government tax (which they definitely are not). Over time the government should raise the penalties for improper haz-waste disposal, and force industry to expand the Orange Drop program to become something truly convenient for consumers with retail and non-retail drop-off depots all over the place (with convenient hours) and, yes, industry should pay for the whole program. Think about it: if hazardous household products become more expensive, is that a bad thing? I think not.
{ 1 trackback }