By Gazette Staff
April 20th, 2026
BURLINGTON, ON
On Earth Day, Wednesday, April 22nd, The Beer Store (TBS) is offering consumers 20% more value on empty alcohol containers. This is an additional 20% on the existing $0.10 and $0.20 cent deposit for alcohol containers purchased in Ontario.
“Annually millions of people return around 1.6 billion empty alcohol containers for reuse and recycling,” said Roy Benin, President and Chief Executive Office of BDL and TBS. “In recognition of Earth Day, we want to invite people to visit a beer Store to get 20% more in deposit money back.”
Tis promotion is only applicable to empty alcohol containers purchased in Ontario and returned for deposit refund at Beer Store retail locations. Kegs are excluded from this promotional offer. Returning empty wine, spirit and beer containers to Beer Store locations or authorized Empty Container Dealers is the best way for consumers to reclaim their deposit and make a positive contribution to the environment. Deposits can be reclaimed at both TBS retail stores and authorized Empty Container Dealers; however, this promotion is only valid at TBS retail locations.
“If you have empties in your basement or garage, Earth Day is the time to bring them back, get 20% more, and get your deposit back,” added Roy Benin.
Returning Empty Alcohol Containers
The Beer Store launched an Empty Return Locator to make it easier than ever to find a Beer Store or alternative retailer that accepts empty alcohol containers so consumers can get their deposit back.
In 2025, Beer Store customers brought back approximately 1.6 billion empty alcohol containers for reuse, recycling and to get deposit money back. The Beer Store is Ontario’s proven recycling and reuse solution for empty alcohol containers, including beer bottles and cans, as well as wine and spirit containers sold in Ontario. In almost 100 years of operation TBS has successfully collected for reuse or recycling over 170 billion empty alcohol containers. In fact, the Beer store collects more containers annually than we sell.
Consumers can find the Locator on the Beer Store’s website. Visit www.thebeerstore.ca/where-to-return-empties.
From the homepage of www.thebeerstore.ca , in the navigation bar select ‘Returning Empties’. This menu will drop down, then select ‘where to Return Empties’.
Discover more from Burlington Gazette - Local News, Politics, Community
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
There’s a continuance of polluting with a cavalier business-as-usual attitude.
This was especially reflected in the astonishingly entitled and short-sighted selfishness I observed some years ago when a TV news reporter randomly asked a young Vancouverite wearing large sunglasses what he thought of government restrictions on disposable plastic straws. Grinning, he retorted that it is like he’s “living in a nanny state that’s always telling me what I can and cannot do”.
His carelessly entitled mentality revealed why so much gratuitous land-and-sea life-destroying plastic waste eventually finds its way into the natural environment, where there are few, if any, caring souls to immediately see it. Sadly, he’s far from being alone.
Also, obstacles to environmental progress were formidable pre-pandemic; however, Covid-19 not only stalled most projects being undertaken, it added greatly to the already busy landfills and burning centers with disposed masks and other non-degradable biohazard-protective single-use materials.
Likely mostly due to Earth’s enormous size, there is a general obliviousness, if not a willful carelessness, towards the vast natural environment. Societally, we still discharge pollutants like it’s all absorbed into the environment without repercussion.
Too many people continue throwing non-biodegradable garbage down a dark chute or flush pollutants down toilet/sink drainage pipes as though they’re inconsequentially dispensing that waste into a black-hole singularity where it’s safely compressed into nothing. And then there are the corporate-scale toxic-contaminant spills in rarely visited wilderness. Out of sight, out of mind.
Also, here in the Far West, if the universal availability of a renewable energy alternative would come at the expense of the traditional ‘energy’ production companies’ large profits, one can expect obstacles, including the political and regulatory sort. If something notably conflicts with corporate big-profit interests, even very progressive motions are greatly resisted, often enough successfully.
Clearly, every day of the year needs to be treated as an ‘Earth Day’.
If the universal availability of a renewable energy alternative comes at the expense of the traditional ‘energy’ production companies’ large profits, one can expect obstacles, including the political and regulatory sort. If something notably conflicts with corporate big-profit interests, even very progressive motions are greatly resisted, often enough successfully.
It all must be convenient for those fossil fuel interests — particularly when neoliberals and conservatives remain overly preoccupied with vocally criticizing one another for their relatively trivial politics and therefore divert attention away from some of the planet’s greatest polluters and pollution, where it actually very-much should and needs to be sharply focused.
Not that long ago, the United Conservative Party government of Alberta, Canada (via its Utilities Commission) suddenly announced its decision to delay, or “pause”, all approvals for new renewable-energy infrastructure for about seven months, citing concerns over logistics and potential end-of-life clean-up costs. Yet, the same government fails to force fossil fuel companies that have left behind major contamination sites in Alberta to clean up after themselves as they formally agreed to do.
So-called conservatives generally do not mind polluting the planet most liberally — unless, of course, it happens to blacken their own backyard. And many drivers of superfluously huge and over-powered thus gas-guzzling vehicles seem to consider it a basic human right, perhaps because it’s an extension of their phallic ego. It may scare those drivers just to contemplate a world in which they can no longer readily fuel that extension, especially since much quieter electric cars are for them no substitute.
Worsening matters is the large and growing populace who are too overworked, underpaid, worried and rightfully angry about food and housing unaffordability for themselves or their family, to have the vital-energy left to criticize big industry for the environmental damage it causes/allows, especially when not immediately observable.
Every day of the year needs to be an ‘Earth Day’; instead, there’s a continuance of polluting with a cavalier business-as-usual attitude.