Source: Montreal Gazette

Returns for beer and soft drink cans will rise to 10 cents per returned item from five cents by the end of 2012 under a new five-year plan to deal with Quebec’s recyclable waste.

Pierre Arcand, Quebec’s minister for the environment, sustainable development and parks, added Sunday the province’s 30-year-old law on handling recyclable waste will be updated.

Every year, Quebecers buy 390 million cans and pay nearly $21 million in deposits on beer and other drink cans. The cans can take 200 to 500 years to decompose.

The government intends to spend $4 million this year to improve the treatment and composting of organic waste and similar dollar amounts in each of the other years of its five-year plan to deal with organic waste, a statement from Arcand and officials with Recyc-Québec, a government agency, explained…

…The new plan includes a public awareness campaign about disposable packaging and the promotion of a new recycling certification program manufacturers can use to label products made with recyclable materials. The plan calls for businesses, government agencies and municipalities to change their buying policies and include the purchase of recycled materials.