Check out the beer skids!

The other day, Holly sent me a little CBC story link in a Facebook message whose gist was "For reals?" You see, a great big ginormous thing happened to our province over the weekend. We got canned beverages. Again.

Back in 1984, we used to have canned beer and pop. But, in an effort to save jobs at a bottling plant, and, as a measure to prevent litter, the province banned canned carbonated beverages. That meant we could have juice and whatnot, but no pop, no beer, no "energy drinks" with fizz. Really, it did work. The jobs remained, and for the most part, other than broken glass here and there, there wasn't much garbage from drinks. Plus, many folks got their spare change, main change, or fund-raised change from collecting bottles.

Too many short-sighted people in the province whined and moaned about it, though, and this new Liberal gov't (which seems to show inexperience and lack of forethought more and more as time goes by) decided it was time to change. They said nobody would lose their jobs when the bottling stopped. This ended up being wrong, because the minister responsible didn't really talk to the pop people. They just guessed. So, we lost some jobs, and now we have cans.

On Friday, a day before the big popping of the "first" can, the litter was already out. Girls were walking around town with can-shaped Red Bull backpacks, handing out freebies on the street. Of course, since can's don't break, and their deposit isn't worth nearly that of what the bottles were, the cans were left in the street. OK, I saw one, but it was within feet of the girls. I imagine many more lazy folks did the same. On my way to work today? At least one plastic bottle and a box for grape Fanta. This has also turned into a great tax grab for the gov't. Now, things that never had a deposit do. It used to be only pop and beer bottles that had a deposit, but now all drink containers (even tetra packs!) have a ten cent deposit, and we only get 5 cents back. Not much incentive. Make it fifty cents and give us 45 back! Entice people to keep their litter and return it!

Saturday saw a street party with free pop and music, and that ceremonial opening of the "first" can by our environment minister. As the pop was doled out on silver platters, he said, "I want to thank... Pepsi."
Yeah. Nothing wrong with that scene.

So, if you hear about PEI getting cans, and you hear about the hype (I heard people were fighting over it at Wal-Mart on Saturday morning... Why? Bottled always tasted better anyway!), and think that we're awfully backwards, I'd agree. I wouldn't have last week, but I think I might now.