Eco fees on electronics, tires headed for the bin as Ontario retools its recycling

Environmental handling charges on consumer electronics and tires to be phased out under new act.

Thestar.com
June 2, 2016
By Rob Ferguson

Long hated by shoppers, eco fees are headed for the trash.

The environmental handling charges on consumer electronics and tires - from 7 cents on mobile phones to $39.50 on big TVs - will be phased out under the Waste-Free Ontario Act passed Wednesday.

But officials can’t say precisely when it will happen because that depends on how long it takes the government and industry representatives to work out the details.

“It’ll be implemented over a couple of years,” Environment Minister Glen Murray said after opposition parties supported the legislation. The act is aimed at getting Ontarians to recycle more products at designated depots, to keep the waste out of garbage dumps.

“You’ll see more systems to recover materials, which will reduce costs,” Murray said.

Consumer electronics contain a host of recyclable stuff, such as glass, copper, plastics and gold, which can be reused.

Because manufacturers will have to foot the cost of recycling under the new system, they now have an incentive to design products “for durability, not the dump,” Murray said.

“You have to design it now to reuse it or recover it because you’re responsible for the end-of-life costs.”

New Democrat MPP Peter Tabuns applauded the new law, saying it is “totally stupid” to waste resources in many products that end up in the garbage instead redirecting them into “the circular economy.”

But he is concerned at the lack of deadlines in the legislation, which could lead to foot-dragging.

“This transition phase could last forever,” said Tabuns (Toronto-Danforth), his party’s environment critic.

Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa Thompson (Huron-Bruce), who called the previous system of eco fees “a mess,” said her party insisted on changes to the bill to require the government to report back annually on its progress.

“We’ll keep pushing them until these eco taxes are gone,” she told reporters. “We are holding this government to account ... we need to see eco taxes phased out.”

The eco fees appeared on store receipts as a separate item, along with sales taxes. Critics said they were unfair because they were set by industry-funded groups and could be higher than actual recycling costs.

Under the new system, manufacturers will have to keep recycling costs low so their products are competitively priced, said Murray. Any such costs will be incorporated into the retail price, not listed separately.

The new law will also phase out industry groups such as the Ontario Electronic Stewardship and the Ontario Tire Stewardship, which charged an eco fee of $4.25 for passenger car tires, will also overhaul the umbrella group Waste Diversion Ontario.

This will be replaced by a new body called the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority that will deal with government on recycling issues.

“We continue with our mandates until we transition,” said Melanie Wilde, executive director of the Ontario Electronic Stewardship, which notes on its web site that one tonne of recycled smartphones yields 324 times more gold than the same weight in ore from a traditional mine.

It’s estimated that $1 billion in valuable resources are lost to garbage dumps in Canada every year.

The changes will not affect municipal blue box curbside recycling for other items, such as newspapers, cans and bottles, for example.

While those blue box programs are credited with keeping about 66 per cent of paper and packaging out of landfills, just 14 per cent of such waste from industrial, commercial and institutional sectors is diverted.

The issue of eco fees took an ugly turn in 2010 when, in addition to tires and electronics, they were slapped on thousands of household products, such as cleaners, on July 1, the same day the 13-per-cent harmonized sales tax was introduced.

Facing an immediate consumer backlash, the government of then-premier Dalton McGuinty forced the scrapping of the new eco fees of up to $6.66 per item by Stewardship Ontario.