A water bottle has three plastics, the bottle lid and label are different. And there is the label glue.
Coloured plastics create a catch 22 problem. In its own chemical family, plastics can often be recycled by regrinding and mixing in with new material. However coloured plastics can't be made white or clear. They can be made black by dumping carbon pigment into the mix. It only works once because black can't be converted back to white or light colours.
Packaging colours are a big thing in marketing and shades of grey (Or pink or blue) are important. We want white for a lot of our food trays etc. If we made the trays out of blends of colours they would literally look like feces. Ick.
I'm not sure where we stand on throwing the problem back at the producers. My understanding is that the provinces each made their own deal with the devils and Ontario and / or the municipalities took a wad of cash to set up the existing program. Revenues from selling the scrap was supposed to run the system. That was when almost every house had a newspaper subscription. Glass and metal containers were a bigger part of the mix.
Stuff that came in cans and glass jars now come in plastic pouches. Baby foods, non carbonated drinks, soups etc.
Does the deal ever expire or were we Homolka'd?
Could the federals enact a law overruling the provincial one?
Quebec, I think, got a better deal on some aspects of recycling, deposits on cans etc.
I manage the stewardship (blue box program) responsibilities for a fairly large company in the GTA.
Each province has it's own recycling program in place. Most are/were broadly similar in their approaches.
In Ontario under the old system (which is currently being phased out), producers (companies which produce/sell the items/packaging that end up in the blue bin) were responsible for funding 50% of the program cost. The other 50% was funded by the relevant municipality. The municipalities were largely responsible for setting up the contracts with disposal/recycling companies to actually operate the blue bin programs. Producers simply reported how much material they put into the system each year and paid a fee to a provincially regulated not-for-profit which doled out the money to municipalities.
The new system of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in Ontario is 100% funded by producers, and is also technically operated by the producers. In reality, there are a handful of not-for-profits that are contracted by producers to manage the program on their behalf. Circular Materials is the main service provider. The new system takes the burden off of the municipalities and the municipal taxpayer. However, the producers can and do simply pass on the cost by increasing prices. At my company, the cost of the stewardship program in Ontario has gone up by about 130%, and is set to increase more next year as the new EPR program come fully online. Other jurisdictions are going up even higher, especially in Quebec where the whole thing is being run by a power-mad non-profit with a government granted monopoly.
Almost all of the other Canadian provinces and territories are in the process of following Ontario's lead and switching to EPR programs. It is currently a nightmare of bureaucracy trying to navigate all of the half-baked programs which all seem to be figuring things out as they go...
In theory, full EPR gives producers control over the materials which end up in the recycling program, allowing them to recoup costs by selling the raw plastics/metals/papers to re-processors. A lot of policy centers are predicting massive growth in the recycled plastic market in particular. In reality, the market is completely saturated with raw plastic so prices are stupidly low. As others here have said, there isn't really much that you can do with recycled plastic.
To conclude my lecture.... the theory that full EPR will encourage/force manufacturers to re-think their processes and products is based on the assumptions that they can a) reduce the quantity of packaging material used, and b) easily re-use the recycled materials to create new packaging. Both of those assumptions are currently false. We'll have to see what innovations come in the future. For now, the added costs of full EPR are being passed onto consumers with little to no environmental benefits.
/end rant
