Bag It Back

You’d be surprised how many wine and spirit containers end up in our landfills (hint: it’s in the millions). As a company dedicated to being environmentally responsible, it was pretty much a no brainer to be part of the Bag It Back program – a.k.a. the Ontario Deposit Return Program (ODRP). The Bag It Back program, which is now in its fourth year of operation, is running in parallel with our own long-standing deposit return program that we’ve been operating since 1927.

Some Bag It Back fast facts:

The program covers all wine, spirit and cooler containers over 100 ml sold through LCBO stores and Ontario winery retail stores, and beer containers over 100 ml sold exclusively through the LCBO.

Consumers pay a refundable deposit at the time of purchase. This deposit is refunded when the empty container is returned to The Beer Store.

The recycling activities of our two deposit programs resulted in 174,292 tons of avoided green house gas emissions. That’s about the same as removing 33,325 cars from the road each year!

Total energy savings from our deposit programs exceeded 2.9 million Gigajoules. If you’re wondering, that’s as much energy contained in 477,453 barrels of oil!

Here’s how some of the containers are recycled:

CLEAR GLASS

Recycled into new glass bottles, primarily at the Owens-Illinois glass container manufacturing plant in Brampton, Ontario.

COLOURED GLASS

Recycled into new coloured glass bottles and fiberglass.

ALUMINUM CANS

Recycled into new aluminum sheet which can be used to make new aluminum cans.

PLASTIC BOTTLES

Recycled into plastic strapping and felted automotive parts and miscellaneous plastic products.