October 18, 2007
CanWest News Service
Bottle battle leaves consumer group broke
Carly Weeks
OTTAWA -- The Consumers Association of Canada is facing ruin and may be forced to dissolve as a result of an ongoing legal battle with Pepsi, Coca-Cola and other beverage companies that charge consumers to recycle cans and bottles.
The association has been ordered by a court in British Columbia to pay the legal fees of the companies it has been fighting, a ruling that was recently upheld by the province's Supreme Court. Unless it can have that decision overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada, the group will likely fold, association president Bruce Cran said Wednesday.
"We don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for those fees. We'll virtually be bankrupt," Cran said. "We're the only consumer group that speaks out on issues at all in Canada. If we're gone, that will leave Canadians without a voice."
The association may have to pay as much as $400,000 in legal fees to the beverage industry, Cran said.
The small, volunteer-based national group has been fighting the beverage giants, along with bottle collection agency Encorp Pacific (Canada), in British Columbia courts over a non-refundable recycling charge that's added to the cost beverages.
Under B.C.'s recycling system, consumers are charged a deposit on non-alcoholic beverage containers and can return them to a recycling depot for a refund. Encorp charges and collects the deposit on behalf of the beverage companies, which compensates Encorp for the refunds it provides to consumers.
The refundable deposit, which is set by the government, is five cents for containers under one litre and 20 cents for those bigger than one litre.
But the company also charges a non-refundable "container recycling fee" on some bottles to cover its own costs when other revenue sources aren't enough.
The fee ranges from one to five cents, depending on the type of bottle and its recycling cost. For instance, a plastic water bottle smaller than one litre has a recycling fee of a penny, while a 500-millilitre glass bottle has a fee of four cents.
Aluminum cans don't have a non-refundable recycling charge, however.
Cran describes the fee as "illegal" and said it should be given back to consumers instead of collected and kept by a private company.
"The only interest we have in this case is to protect consumers who we feel have been damaged at the moment the way it is," Cran said.
He said the plan has raised as much as $200 million for the beverage industry.
But Encorp, which collects bottle deposits on behalf of the beverage company and covers the cost of recycling, said it doesn't make a profit and the fee is necessary to run the business.
"It's important to know we're a not-for-profit," president Neil Hastie said. "The fee is necessary in order to provide sufficient money to operate the entire system. This is an entirely user-paid system. There's no government money involved here."
He said a portion of the company's operating funds comes from bottle deposits that consumers have not redeemed. But some bottles, such as glass containers, are more expensive to recycle and the not-for-profit company sometimes doesn't have enough to cover it, so they charge a non-refundable fee on some containers.
Cran said he is attempting to take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, but that the future of the organization is very unclear.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=31d35eae-748b-4168-87d2-418f1c46d590&k=23017
