hot take, but we need a deposit system for pill bottles and marijuna containers

context: i live in Canada.

ive been on prescription medication since 2021. ive also been buying commercially packaged marijuana since 2019.

so that means every month for the past 5 years i have been given a plastic pill bottle that ends up in the recycling or trash. every few weeks or months i get another plastic marijuana container that also ends up in the recycling or trash.

if my math is right, thats about 60 pill bottles just for me. and likely ~50 marijuana containers.

as someone who lives in the suburbs and in the downtown core of a smaller city, i have seen thousands of pill bottles lying discarded in gutters and greenspaces. i see tens of thousands of discarded marijuana packaging littering the landscapes.

one thing i do not see a ton of is discarded beverage containers. occasionally i see a few but they are quickly picked up by people.

why is this? because we have a system that charges a deposit on beverage containers. so generally speaking, most people keep and collect their beverage containers and bring them in to recycling depots to get their money back.

and if people do not keep their own beverage containers, other people will find and bring them to recycle depots. ive done it, ive picked beverage containers out of the trash or recycling. money was tight, and i wasn't going to leave ~$1 lying around, especially when it takes me ~30 seconds to gather the containers.

i see a lot of people doing it. my father-in-law does it, he makes ~$100/month roughly. there is a older man in a old ford truck who i see driving around the city, he drives around to dumpsters all day. i used to see him come into my apartment complex to pick beverage containers, with the bed of his truck full of bottles and cans. likely that this guy is making closer to $1k/month.

so the end result is few beverage containers being thrown into the trash and few beverage containers littering the city and country side.

i think its time for a 10 cent deposit on pill bottles and marijuana packaging. perhaps even a 25 cent deposit, maybe.

i can think of 2 scenarios for both, starting with pill bottles:

a) pill bottle suppliers switch to labels that can be easily removed at processing on pill bottles. pharmacies charge a deposit, then take pill bottles back from their clients, refund the deposit, then send the pill bottles back to the supplier to be examined, cleaned, and sanitized before being shipped back to pharmacies.

b) pill bottles are accepted at recycle depots

personally, i think a) is probably better, as labels can be removed, the bottles are sanitized and reused, and not require energy intensive processing like other recycled plastic containers.

as for marijuana packaging, i can also think of 2 similar scenarios like pill bottles: either sent back to suppliers or producers, cleaned and sanitized and reused by producers to package more product; or they can be refunded at a recycling depot.

judging by how few beverage containers i see, vs how many marijuana packaging and pill bottles i see, i think a deposit system on both will lead to a lot less littering in general, but will also reduce visible litter.

i think that the best case scenario would be that both style of containers can be reused for their intended purpose with minimal processing, however this is unlikely due to profit incentives for businesses like the supplier/manufacturer.

although not ideal, at least having a deposit system and letting both container styles be recycled at a recycling depot the likely option. while this will mean that energy intensive recycling processes are an inevitability, at least this helps with litter.