The Quebec government wants the SAQ to recycle bottles, even though the Crown corporation has no interest in doing so.

The SAQ recently commissioned a report detailing the extreme lengths it would have to undergo to recycle beer, wine, and liquor bottles sold across Quebec.

"We want to maximize the way to recover all the glass," said Finance Minister Carlos Leitao.

That report said it would cost $115 million to set up 522 depots across the province, and that it would cost an additional $135 million to operate those depots for five years.

The SAQ report said transporting waste would also create an additional 35,000 tonnes of CO2 in pollution.

The report said this cost was not worthwhile for the 200 million bottles consumed by Quebecers each year, many of which, according to the SAQ, already get pitched into recycling bins every week.

Leitao said the SAQ-commissioned report failed to take many other possibilities into account, but acknowledged that any new system would come at a price.

"The system as it is now is not working properly. We want to put in place a better system but also what I said before we want to put in place a better system but also we should not you know be naive to believe that any new system wouldn't cost anything," he said.

The debate about recycling bottles at the SAQ has been going on for years, with many advocates calling on the SAQ to implement a deposit system similar to what exists for soft drink and mainstream beer bottles and cans.

Leitao said that is one possibility, but said the provincial government may look at altering existing curbside recycling programs so that glass bottles would have to be separated by people at home.

Politicians usually encourage new green energy projects but glass recycling is challenging.

“We have to first answer the question of who pay and how much,” said CAQ leader François Legault.

Last year the Quebec environmental group Les Amis de la Terre said that most glass recycled in Quebec gets mixed up with too much plastic and metal to be worth recycling.

Companies don't want to recycle glass anymore, said Ken Lester of the McGill University Faculty of Management.

Glass recycling isn't a moneymaker, he said, but adds that deposits on bottles would make people think about the bigger picture.

 “If you have a meaningful amount on deposit then that's sort of an incentive to bring it back and I think that's the kind of thing we need, we need to sort of nudge people into doing the right thing.”

People should also remember what it takes to move all those bottles, he said.

“The other problem with glass is that it's heavy, so the transportation of it is expensive and so we use a lot of fossil fuels, obviously in the transportation of it,” said Lester.