Being environmentally aware is obviously important.
We cannot ignore the impact we are having on our environment through car exhaust, garbage to landfills, and frankly most of the things humans do which impact the way of nature.
So it’s important to take some stewardship of things in order to ensure things do not get worse than they are today for future generations.
That said programs should make sense.
That is what is rather disappointing about the Household Packaging and Paper Stewardship Program which will launch Jan.1 in Saskatchewan under the Multi-Material Stewardship Western umbrella.
As the name of the program implies the program is geared to raise dollars for a very specific area of garbage flow, household packaging and paper.
While they are designing a program for household packaging and paper, the end users are not being asked to fund the program.
Instead business is.
If you are a grocery store selling dry soup mix in a box, the store would count that in estimating the tonnage of paper products it will pay a fee toward — maybe.
The program is rather more complicated than that.
Bill goes to a local auto dealership to have a new starter installed. The starter comes in a box. But Bill is having it installed in the dealership shop, so the box is considered commercial waste and not part of the new program.
Jim walks in the same day. He too needs a starter, but as a handyman he buys the boxed starter to take home and install. The box would then be part of the program and be factored into whatever fee the dealership might pay to the program.
Another example has a lone business exempted while a chain is not.
On his way home Bill and his wife stop at a franchise fast food restaurant. They have burgers wrapped in paper, and two soft drinks served on a paper tray. The packaging is part of the program, although the straws for the drink are not covered.
Jim and his wife choose to buy their fast food at a locally-owned mom and pop burger joint. As a singular business, they may not be included under the program.
Of course there are other threshold rules, where businesses under set sales levels, or generating lower levels of garbage are exempt.
But if you do meet the criteria you will pay a fee based on the tonnages of household packaging and paper you send home with consumers each year. The fees are only a part of the business cost, as the time factor of determining waste tonnages each year will be extensive.
And the program for all its contradictory rules, and time consuming calculations will generate a whopping $8 million annually, with 21 per cent of that siphoned off to cover program administration.
That leaves about $6 million to spread around to municipalities signing on to the program and offering recycling options.
In the end business pays for consumer refuse recycling, deals with the cost of accounting, and generates what works out to $6 per person in the province going to recycling programs.
While recycling might be an ‘apple pie and mothers’ issue, the way to go about it should be far simpler than what we are seeing here.
Perhaps a line on the provincial tax form where every person is assessed a $6 environmental fee. The end user pays, and the administration is already in place for collecting taxes.
But that would be too simple, so instead a convoluted program onerous to business, will launch in January.
