Over 1.3 billion containers are covered under British Columbia's deposit-refund system each year. In 1999, British Columbia's Ministry of Environment, Land and Parks (MELP, http://www.gov.bc.ca/elp/) reported that the beverage industry has achieved a province-wide recovery rate of over 84% of containers covered by the program. MELP did not require reporting of container recovery amounts prior to the implementation of the Beverage Container Stewardship Program (BCSP), so recovery levels from this time can only be estimated. Dave Douglas of MELP reported that while the recovery rate of beer containers has not significantly changed, recovery of soft drink containers smaller than two liters has risen dramatically from the approximately 50% level achieved before the BCSP began.(10) Furthermore, British Columbia's expanded deposit-refund system covers 300 million more containers each year than the former system.

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