The Beer Store’s Responsible Stewardship Report Circularity in Action for 95 Years includes details on The Beer Store’s deposit return system for beer containers and the Ontario Deposit Return Program (ODRP) for containers that include wine and spirit bottles purchased at the LCBO. In 2022, over 1.7 billion beverage alcohol containers were collected from Ontario consumers (over 1.27 billion beer containers and over 452 million ODRP containers) and reused or recycled at the highest order to advance a circular economy.
“Looking back on the past 95 years, while much has changed in our business and around the world, there are many ways in which we’ve remained consistent. These include our commitment to offering a wide array of products to Ontario consumers, keeping our communities safe through responsible sales, fostering a safe and inclusive workplace for our team members, and acting as environmental leaders,” said Roy Benin, President of The Beer Store. “Our dedication to the environment has allowed us to establish and maintain a more circular beer industry in Ontario for almost a century.”
Over the last 95 years, The Beer Store contributed to several circular economy milestones:
- An estimated 170 billion containers have been returned to The Beer Store over the last 95 years.
- Over 5 billion ODRP containers have been returned since the program began in 2007. Stacked end to end, all the wine and spirit containers recovered would reach the moon and back!
- The Beer Store reuses and recycles 4,000 containers every minute of every day, every year.
- Over 200,000 metric tons of GHG emissions are avoided each year, equivalent to nearly 45,000 cars off Ontario roads.
- The Beer Store has the only scalable refillable bottle solution in the country, and it is considered a true example of the circular economy. These bottles are reused 15 times on average before being recycled and achieved at return rate of 96% in 2022.
- The Beer Store has raised millions of dollars through can and bottle drives to support dozens of charities across the province and Canada. This includes the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada in which TBS has been a long-time supporter, raising over $21 million over the years thanks to the efforts of our staff and generous donations of our customers.