When I went to Home Depot and bought a new toilet on the weekend, I noticed that among the various messages stamped on the outside of the box for my lovely Kohler item (made in Mexico, if I’m remembering correctly) was one boasting that this new model had been shipped with with far less packaging than was previously the case.

That’s the kind of message we’re going to be seeing in print, and in practice, at many more stores in the future here.

As I discovered only recently, B.C. is moving to a system of having producers and stores be 100 per cent financially responsible for recycling their products and packaging.

Their plan for accomplishing this by May 2014 is due this November. As I also discovered, it’s a complicated discussion with considerable debate over who should run recycling systems, if it’s companies that are going to be paying the bill.