A more transparent bill or a way to pass on the cost?
Have you noticed that your grocery bill is getting more and more expensive? Of course you have. But do you know exactly why? This is at the heart of the debate launched by Quebec businesses. Faced with skyrocketing costs to finance selective collection, they no longer want to foot the bill alone. Their proposal: the addition of « eco-fees » visible directly on your receipts.
For the Quebec Food Processing Council (CTAQ), the current situation lacks clarity. Annick Van Campenhout, vice president of the organization, is categorical: it is not normal for consumers to be unaware of why prices are rising. According to her, people complain about inflation without knowing that part of this increase is used to cover the growing costs of selective collection, managed by Éco Entreprises Québec. « Citizens, apart from the deposit system, are not involved in the civic act of recycling, » she laments.
The idea is simple: instead of discreetly incorporating these costs into the price of your box of cereal or jar of jam, the industry would like it to be explicit. As is already the case for tires and electronic devices. For the CTAQ, there is a limit to what companies can absorb. Annick Van Campenhout even refers to it as a « missed opportunity » and believes that recycling is a social issue that concerns everyone, not just manufacturers. Blue bins, deposits, or eco-fees: how can we make sense of it all?
Finally, there are the famous eco-fees. This is the model used for batteries, paint, and refrigerators. You pay a visible, non-refundable amount to finance recycling. This is the model that the food industry is eyeing for its packaging. A logistical and ethical nightmare?
The idea of extending eco-fees to yogurt or granola bars has experts up in arms. « How can you determine how much an eco-fee should be for a given type of packaging? » asks Karel Ménard, executive director of the Quebec Common Front for Ecological Waste Management. With the multitude of products on store shelves, management would become a real headache. Francis Vermette, of Recyc-Québec, agrees: currently, these fees are internalized. Consumers pay, of course, but without the administrative complexity. But beyond the logistics, it is the philosophy that is troubling. For Julie-Christine Denoncourt of Équiterre, transparency is desirable, but not if it serves to relieve manufacturers of their responsibility. This is the principle of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR): those who put a product on the market must manage its end of life. If the customer is billed directly, the pressure on the manufacturer is reduced. « They are not the ones who design the packaging in which products are sold, » she points out, emphasizing that companies should instead use the subsidies available for eco-design. Karel Ménard goes further: for him, eco-fees are often perceived by citizens as a simple tax. Worse, they guarantee nothing. « A product can be recovered and then sent to landfill, » he says, criticizing the often low recovery rates for products subject to eco-fees, unlike deposits, which are self-financing and encourage return.
So, which is the best system?
While the industry advocates for transparency in eco-fees in order to show consumers the true cost—and perhaps encourage them to make better choices or buy in bulk, according to Équiterre—experts remain skeptical. Karel Ménard believes that the financial burden already falls too heavily on consumers. For him, the real solution lies in sustainable, repairable products and an end to planned obsolescence. Ultimately, these three systems (recycling bins, deposits, eco-fees) have recently coexisted in their modernized form. As Francis Vermette points out, « it’s all new and it’s still difficult to decide which system could be the
Source: ici.radio-canada.ca Created by humans, assisted by AI.