| More than 400 employees of the Owens-Illinois glass plant inToronto received a shock on Tuesday when they discovered theirfactory is being tossed upon the scrap heap of obsolescence comeSeptember.What killed the plant? A robust Loonie? Skyrocketing energy costs?Nope. The silent assassin is none other than the Ontariogovernment's liquor monopoly and its disingenuous pursuit of abogus "green" strategy. Glassware In a nutshell, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) now deemsglass bottles to be environmentally-unfriendly. Waste is measuredby weight in Ontario, and glass is heavy, so out with glass. As aresult, the LCBO is actively strong-arming suppliers to opt forother forms of packaging. As Owen-Illinois CEO and chairman AlbertStroucken notes in a July 2, 2008 letter to Premier DaltonMcGuinty, the LCBO has been "aggressively encouraging -- and insome cases effectively forcing -- our customers in Ontario and inother jurisdictions to switch from using glass packaging toso-called 'alternative' materials such as plastic and asepticcartons."Unfortunately for Owens-Illinois workers, the LCBO's anti-glasscampaign is all about optics, not facts. The LCBO's recentself-congratulatory marketing push hailed its campaign as "EnviroChic: The Evolution of Packaging." The liquor monopoly crowneditself a green champion thanks to a policy of "challenging" itssuppliers to reduce packaging. When a government monopoly"challenges" a supplier, this is akin to issuing an edict, as Mr.Stroucken suggested.The LCBO's green master plan boils down to a weight reductionscheme by coercing suppliers to drop glass bottles in favour oflight-weight aluminum, Tetra Pak and plastic. "Look, Ma. No wasteby weight." But putting containers on a diet creates anotherproblem, which is massive waste that can't be recycled and must beland-filled.Consider the LCBO's push for wineries to eschew glass bottles infavour of Tetra Paks. Undeniably, a Tetra Pak carton is lighterthan a glass bottle; however, the recycling rate for Tetra Paks isdownright abysmal. According to Waste Diversion Ontario, aminuscule 12.7% of Tetra Pak packaging was recovered in 2005,meaning 87.3% ended up in landfill. And Tetra Paks, like Toronto'sgarbage, must be shipped out of the province for processing sincethere aren't any facilities to recycle the stuff in Ontario.Also of note, Tetra Paks are derived from virgin pulp and aluminum.As such, the manufacture of Tetra Pak containers requires excessiveenergy consumption and needlessly depletes natural resources. Bycomparison, almost 100% of all refillable glass bottles arerecovered. "The LCBO has not produced any credible, validatedthird-party assessment of the environmental claims it is makingregarding alternative packaging," notes Stroucken. Owens-Illinois'sToronto and Brampton plants are situated within 100 kilo-metres ofevery major beverage alcohol producer in the province, making it alocalized packaging solution.
.Unfortunately, given its monopoly position, the LCBO's strong-armtactics have paid off. "We were recently advised that as a resultof commercial pressure by the LCBO, a major beverage alcoholproducer in Ontario is switching from competitively-priced glasspackaging to plastic bottles," notes Mr. Stroucken. The LCBO, itseems, is taking greenmail to a new level. |
