Taxpayers won’t be paying recycling costs by 2024

You make it, you deal with it: That's the new policy on recyclable materials coming to Ontario.

We're on track to give producers of recyclables 100 per cent responsibility for collecting and processing those materials, something that's currently shared with taxpayers.

That's according to Jon Arsenault, the Region's Director of Waste Management.

“It's a cost of $2 to 6 million dollars annually, so that cost being removed from the taxpayer provides council with some opportunities to use that money in different ways, for different programs, or however they see fit,” he said. 

It's not clear yet if those savings will just be passed on to the consumer at the store shelves.

“That will be at the jurisdiction of the producer networks that put it out, and put the products on the shelf,” said Arsenault. “I think there's a sense that there might be some additional cost when you purchase, but to the extent that the taxpayer is paying now, I think it will be more normalized. Many of these companies — the larger companies that are part of this producer network, so you can think of the Loblaws and Walmarts of the world — they have corporate sustainability goals and guidelines that are driving this. It's going to have to be something where we'll have to wait and see.”

Arsenault also noted that these companies have a better ability to change their processing plants and methods than municipalities do, a problem that stretches back to years of not investing in our municipal recycling system. 

This change is nothing new,  Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks Jeff Yurek announced it a year ago, and municipalities have been advocating for the change for a decade.

What is new is a confirmed timeline for the migration, which will be March 2024 for Waterloo Region.

“That coincides with when our waste collection contract comes due, and some of our processing contracts at the blue box site come due, so it's a natural transition point,” said Arsenault. “What we still need to do, however, is determine what that will look like at that time. We could still be quite involved at the Region from a perspective of administering and overseeing contracts for that, for the blue box side of things, as well as all the other waste streams that we collect (the garbage and green bin).”

He added that a seamless transition for residents is a priority, so unless you hear otherwise, keep using the blue box at your usual schedule.

You can read more about the transition process here.

You can read about why the transition is happening in the first place here.

A8. Minister @JeffYurekMPP says the province is moving forward in the late fall. The goal is to have the work wrapped up, with the regulations in place by the end of this year.

— AMO (@AMOPolicy) August 18, 2020