City staff think Toronto should get out of the recycling business. Why? That’s a secret

A confidential report from city staff recommends Toronto not bid on a contract for curbside recyclable collection after 2026.

Thestar.com
Oct. 2, 2023
David Rider

Toronto has the trucks, trained staff and decades of experience for picking up residential blue boxes. Yet when it comes time to bid for the job as the province moves to a reformed recycling system, municipal staffers are telling the city not to compete for the contract.

Why? That’s a secret: the provincial regulator for the new system is forcing everyone who reads its request for proposal (RFP) -- seeking bids on Toronto curbside collection starting in 2026 -- to sign non-disclosure agreements.

However, the Star has managed to learn some details that have city staff concerned, especially around issues such as privacy and “impossible” contamination standards.

One councillor who is aware of the discussion is raising alarm bells that the secret process is stacked in favour of private firms over the city staff who are already doing the job.

Ontario’s recycling gets a revamp

Toronto, with a waste and recycling budget of more than $65 million a year, is in the first wave of Ontario cities to see responsibility and costs for recycling -- now picked up by city crews east of Yonge Street and by city-contracted crews to the west -- move to waste makers under “extended producer responsibility.”

Premier Doug Ford’s government, which launched the recycling revamp in 2021, says homeowners will benefit from a waste-producer-run system that will save municipalities money and see new materials added to bins.

Responsibility for Toronto’s blue boxes switched in July, but the city negotiated with Circular Materials, the national non-profit tasked by the province to oversee collection systems, for city crews to continue local pickup until Dec. 31, 2025. Circular Materials was founded in 2021 by companies including Costco, Loblaw and McDonald’s.

The provincial agency overseeing recycling reform, the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), is requiring Circular Materials to make such contract documents subject to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), swearing to secrecy anyone granted access to them.

In an email, the agency said it required the secrecy “following stakeholder concerns about commercially sensitive information being publicly released.”

However, after the Star notified it of demands for transparency, it said that “if stakeholders now believe an NDA is not required, RPRA is open to reviewing the NDA requirement.”

City staff raises concerns about RFP

City staff raised their many concerns about the RFP in a confidential report to councillors, explaining their advice that Toronto not bid on the contract despite having equipment and expertise to continue collecting Ontario-invented blue boxes.

The Star has learned details of staff concerns in that confidential report.

“The RFP has an excessive list of information and technology requirements that need to be met by city staff and any subcontractors,” including on-truck video cameras, it states.

That raised concerns about cost, as well as possible objections from city waste collectors and their CUPE Local 416 union.

Solid waste managers also raised a red flag over a clause that said the contracted collector could face financial penalties if more than four per cent of recyclables are found to be tainted with food waste or other contaminants.

The city’s current contamination rate is 30 per cent, despite public awareness campaigns about what to put in the box. “It’s virtually impossible for the city’s blue bin program to ever achieve four per cent contamination, resulting in continual non-compliance” with the contract, according to the report.

The confidential report also raises concerns about whether the city could continue taking recyclables to its network of waste transfer stations, and concerns that Circular Materials might carve up the city, choosing different collectors for different areas.
City manager pushes for RFP transparency

At a recent committee meeting, Matt Keliher, a senior solid waste manager, chose his words carefully to not breach the secrecy requirement while expressing regret for not being able to recommend the city bid.

“We are best positioned to deliver the service that we have delivered for decades,” he said, and would like to negotiate directly with Circular Materials -- rather than bid against private collectors -- on a contract that would see city staff in city trucks continue picking up Toronto recycling.

“We are advocating very strongly that the RFP document and the terms are made public so that we’re extremely transparent in the rationale for why we made this extremely tough decision” not to bid, Keliher said. “Transparency in this matter is paramount.”

Councillor calls RFP ‘poison pill’

Though she refused to discuss details of the confidential report, Coun. Dianne Saxe, a member of the infrastructure and environment committee, called the RFP a “poison pill” for municipalities because of the new requirements.

As a lawyer, Saxe, a former Ontario environment commissioner, successfully sued industry “stewards” to force reluctant companies to pay half of municipalities’ recycling costs under the system now being replaced.

“This is that same approach but on steroids -- typical Ford stuff, hurting the public sector and helping the private sector pocket lots of profits,” said Saxe, comparing the RFP secrecy to agreements in the province’s Ontario Place redevelopment and now-abandoned push to develop parts of the Greenbelt.

Circular Materials chief executive Allen Langdon told the Star in an email that “a competitive procurement process is considered the most equitable mechanism to solicit proposals from all interested parties to provide expanded collection services to residents and facilities required by the Blue Box Regulation.

“Circular Materials welcomes proposals from all interested parties.”

He defended the RFP’s call for on-truck cameras as a “mechanism to reduce contamination,” saying they are “positioned to monitor curb set-out and content of carts as they are unloaded into the vehicle.”

As for the requirement that recyclables collected have less than four per cent contamination, Landon said such rules are necessary to boost the amount of waste recycled and kept out of landfill, adding it has worked in B.C. where waste producers have long overseen recycling.

He said that rather than worry about recycling changes, Torontonians can look forward to an expanded list of items that they will be able to throw in their blue boxes.

City jobs at stake with recycling revamp

Local 416 representatives, meanwhile, are urging the city to win the collection contract to prevent the possible loss of work for 60 city waste collectors.

Keliher said the workers could be moved to vacant jobs in his department or, failing that, to other posts in the city’s vast workforce.

The committee recommendation going to city council next month raises the possibility of finding them work by bringing trash collection between Yonge Street and the Humber River, now done by GFL Environmental, in house.

Emily Alfred of Toronto Environmental Alliance is urging the city to retain control of recycling collection, saying industry has done an inadequate job of recycling when put in charge, resulting in more waste going to landfill at city expense.

She noted that the province’s switch to producer responsibility for battery recycling saw just 12 per cent of single-use batteries sold in Ontario recycled last year, down from 47 per cent in 2019.

Patrick Dovigi, chief executive of GFL Environmental, said in an interview he hasn’t read the Toronto collection RFP, but those issued for collection in other municipalities do not favour private collectors.

“The program is very onerous and the penalties are extreme, especially around diversion now that the producers are responsible to meet their diversion targets,” he said. “There is a lot of onus put on the collectors, which is financially risky” for private companies or municipalities.

As for the prospect of losing the trash collection contract in the west part of the old city of Toronto, to help ensure city waste collectors don’t lose their jobs, Dovigi didn’t seem to mind.

“There’s lots of work for us regardless,” he said. “That’s the toughest collection zone in the zone -- streets are tight, bike lanes don’t help -- so if somebody wanted to take that over, we’d bid but if they want to take it in house, so be it.”