Earlier this month, the Ontario government proposed major changes to the blue-bin system of recycling collection that, critics say, would substantially weaken the province’s goals for diverting waste from landfills. The proposed changes, still open for public comment until July 4, would extend the timelines for Ontario to hit certain diversion targets from 2030 to 2035. More importantly, they would remove certain obligations from the privately operated consortia that are taking responsibility for recycling away from Ontario municipalities.
This transition is part of the long-term transformation of the blue-bin program from a municipally-operated service to one funded and operated by the companies responsible for creating the packaging and other waste that ends up in landfills. Originating under the Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne in 2016, the Tories inherited and largely continued the blue-bin transition as relatively uncontroversial environmental policy that also promised to remove some cost pressure from municipal taxpayers.
Now the government is changing its tune. Under the proposed changes, the producer responsibility organizations (PROs) that are taking over blue-bin service will not have to assume responsibility for recyclable collection away from people’s homes (for example, in public parks). And some residences that don’t currently receive blue-bin recycling — including new apartment buildings and long-term care homes — can no longer expect to be brought into the system, at least not without having to pay additional fees. Homes with existing collection service will not be affected.
The government says the proposed changes are meant to keep a lid on costs for businesses.
“Our government is proposing changes to improve transparency for all producers under the blue box system and help manage unanticipated cost increases while ensuring current services are maintained in communities across the province,” Alexandru Cioban, spokesperson for the minister of environment, conservation and parks, said in an email before emphasizing that places currently receiving blue-bin collection will be unaffected.
The crux of the problem is that while PROs will take over recycling collection, municipalities will still be responsible for the rest of the solid waste stream. If provincial policy changes result in less ambitious targets for recycling, more waste will end up in the trash — and thus municipal responsibility.
The proposed changes have caught many off guard. In Toronto, for example, the proposed changes would mean that the city (not the PRO) would continue to be responsible for collecting recyclables from parks and on-street garbage cans, a substantial cost the city had expected would be lifted from its balance sheet.
“We’re still trying to understand the ministry’s intent, and translating that into what it might mean for the City of Toronto,” says Charlotte Uena, acting director of policy, planning and outreach for the city’s solid waste division. “But generally speaking, for us the big impact will be removing the requirement for public space recycling. It’s a definite departure from what we thought the government had gotten right in the first place.”
Toronto’s not alone. The Association of Municipalities of Ontario said in an emailed statement the proposed changes by the province “raise concerns” and warns that Queen’s Park could be creating service gaps that municipalities around the province are going to have to fill at their own expense.
“Specifically, less material diverted means more waste in municipal landfills, potentially leading to higher municipal waste management costs from longer, more costly waste transportation as landfills fill faster,” said AMO’s policy director Lindsay Jones. “These proposals may also exacerbate Ontario's landfill capacity crisis, projected to reach its limit in less than 10 years.”
Uena agrees. While she says Toronto’s current search for a replacement to its Green Land Landfill (acquired in 2006 and expected to reach capacity by 2035) is primarily driven by other factors (such as Toronto’s growing population), the proposed changes could result in even more waste being sent to landfill.
It’s not just municipalities who have been unpleasantly surprised. The recycling industry had made substantial investments in recent years in anticipation of a certain volume of recyclables needing both collecting and sorting, with those investments now being called into question.
“We’ve got three new MRFs (material recovery facilities) that are going to be built; those costs are already built into contracts, they’re not going to reduce those costs,” says Peter Hargreave, president of Policy Integrity Consulting and a long-time advisor in the sector. “It really puts a chill on investments that have already been made and could potentially be made in the province.”
The proposed changes to the blue-bin program are just one facet of a bigger problem facing Ontario when it comes to solid waste. Aside from the looming landfill capacity crisis cited by AMO, the government has also struggled to decide what to do with beverage containers specifically, as the liberalization of beer and wine sales calls into question the future of the Beer Store’s deposit return program. Some Ontario municipalities have already functionally lost access to the Beer Store’s program as the retailer closes locations, and the government hasn’t committed to a replacement program.
There’s also consistent criticism of the plastics industry for misleading consumers and governments about the actual potential for recycling its products, and persistent tension between making recycling collection convenient for consumers and maximizing diversion: putting all kinds of recycling in one bin is easy for homeowners but also produces soiled recyclables that can’t be reclaimed. In fact, the province says that one reason for abandoning “away from home” recyclables is simply because public recycling bins are the most likely to be soiled and thus unusable.
To Hargreave, the changes so late in a decade-long policy shift don’t inspire a lot of confidence.
“There’s been a crazy amount of lobbying on this file, but I don’t know that producers are even going to support these changes,” Hargreave added. “I don’t know that the government even knows what it wants to do anymore.”
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