It's time Ontario caught up to the rest of Canada and introduced a deposit-return program for non-alcoholic beverage containers. This program is long overdue and essential to reduce plastic pollution in Ontario. 

Deposit-return systems—where consumers return their empties to the store for a refund of the deposit they paid when they bought the beverage—keeps billions of plastic bottles from being landfilled, incinerated and littered each year.

In Ontario, expanded deposit return would reduce waste going to the landfill by 100,000 tonnes per year, and litter by 8,000 tonnes per year. It would keep an estimated 1.7 billion plastic bottles out of landfills, incinerators and the natural environment.

Due to pressure from Ontarians like you, in 2023, a working group was established to design a deposit-return program for non-alcoholic beverages. Even beverage companies were onside. But barely a year later, the plan was scrapped. 

Deposit-return is the most effective way to ensure beverage containers are collected and refilled or recycled. No other system works as well. That’s why most other provinces in Canada already have a comprehensive deposit-return system. And why those provinces do a much better job of making sure beverage containers end up where they belong—and out of the environment!

Tell provincial party leaders you want a deposit-return program for all beverage containers in Ontario.

 

Your letter will go to Leader of the Ontario PC Party, Doug Ford, Leader of the Green Party of Ontario Mike Schreiner, Leader of the New Democratic Party of Ontario Marit Stiles, and Leader of the Liberal Party of Ontario Bonnie Crombie.