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Bottle deposit program delayed

Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 04/05) - A territory-wide bottle deposit system is on hold until this fall at the earliest.

The program was supposed to start April 1.

Now, Brendan Bell, minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development, said NWT residents won't start paying deposits and returning their pop cans and juice bottles for recycling until sometime in the fall.

He said a lack of interest in smaller communities and problems with retail wholesalers are forcing the government to scrap the original start-up date.

"We didn't have the responses we thought we would," Bell said Wednesday.

"I think we had nine communities come back with responses to the (request-for-proposals) process for community depots."

The plan called for establishment of community depots to collect empty beverage containers for recycling. Residents could then return their empties for a partial refund on bottle deposits charged at the store.

Bell said besides the lack of interest from potential entrepreneurs to run the depots, a dispute with one wholesaler supplying retailers with juice and pop in the NWT created other problems.

"Right now the lion's share of administrative burden will be on wholesalers as compared to retailers," said Bell.

"They suggested we put it on retailers, sort of like the GST. Our concern was that would require licensing everybody who wanted to do a bake sale, for instance."

Bell admitted the government will have to work harder to convince communities that the program is worth buying into. "We don't want it to be just something that rolls out in Fort Simpson or Norman Wells or Yellowknife, Hay River and Fort Smith," said Bell.

"We want it to be more broadly and widely used."