Brands are taking over recycling what’s in your blue box. What will that mean?

The move is meant to relieve Ontario taxpayers of the costs of recycling, and promote use of materials that are more recyclable. Skeptics say it might do neither.

Thestar.com
Oct. 3, 2023
Patty Winsa

A seismic shift in recycling is happening in Ontario, with brands taking on full responsibility for the management of blue box programs as well as the cost, which previously was split evenly with municipalities.

The move is meant to relieve taxpayers of the financial burden of recycling, and incentivize brands to use materials that are more recyclable.

But skeptics say there’s a good chance that the shift -- called extended producer responsibility -- will do neither.

“What people were being sold was that EPR would actually save taxpayers money,” said Cal Lakhan, a York University research scientist and waste expert.

But Lakhan said his modelling shows EPR costs could balloon, because the scope of the collection program is set to expand to some multi-residential buildings, and communities in the Far North, as well as institutions such as schools and retirement homes.

There will also be an expanded list of items accepted in the blue box and higher volumes of materials to meet recycling targets set by the provincial government.

“Either companies eat it all,” he said of the cost, “which I think is a ludicrous assumption. And that’s actually what a lot of proponents of EPR said. They said ‘oh, it’s an inconsequential cost. It’s fractions of fractions of a penny,” that producers pay per item.

“The more realistic thing that would happen, and has happened, is that the cost gets passed on to consumers.”

In Ontario, one of the major players in EPR is Circular Materials, a non-profit representing brands such as Nestlé, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola Canada and Costco.

“The idea is that EPR is going to come in and relieve municipal taxpayers of having to pay that cost,” said Allen Langdon, the CEO of Circular Materials. “And instead, producers will be paying that directly.

“In terms of how that cost is managed, that’s input costs for producers to manage, and they’ll manage accordingly like they do all of the input costs that go into the final price of the product.”

Langdon said as recycling expands, there will be opportunities for innovation and operational efficiencies.

“At Circular Materials, we are committed to creating efficient and effective recycling systems to support producers in meeting their regulatory obligations across Canada.”

Allen Langdon, the CEO of Circular Materials, says “the idea is that EPR is going to come in and relieve municipal taxpayers of having to pay that cost. And instead, producers will be paying that directly.”

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The blue box currently costs about $366 million province-wide, with producers paying half in the older model, which was a different version of EPR.

The new program will roll out this year to 67 communities in Ontario -- including Toronto, London and Ottawa -- with more added over the next few years.

Circular Materials is acting as the system administrator, issuing the requests for proposals that go out to service providers -- waste management companies or even municipalities -- to operate collection at curbside, as well as the sorting and processing. There are other producer groups in the province that represent other brands.

In some jurisdictions, residents won’t notice a change because the producer groups have already signed contracts with municipalities, which will continue to carry out collection. But in other jurisdictions it may be a private company that takes over collection. As the Star reported Monday, Toronto municipal staffers are telling the city not to compete for the next curbside collection contract, with concerns around issues such as privacy and “impossible” contamination standards.

The hope is that EPR will harmonize the items accepted in the blue box across municipalities -- which can vary by city -- and even other provinces where EPR is being implemented.

“I would say that by 2026, most of the country should have some sort of uniform material list, and it’ll have a larger breadth of recyclables than what we have today,” said Langdon.

How all that recycling will be handled -- where the extra infrastructure will come from and who will pay for it -- is a big unknown.

“It’s not necessarily part of our responsibility,” said Langdon. “But what I would say is that there are targets we need to meet. And to meet those targets, we’re not only going to have to collect more material, but actually be able to deliver a higher yield from the material we collect.

“Obviously that’s going to need some investments in facilities -- more automated, more modern facilities. And so that’s a likely outcome.”

The province has set recycling targets by material, including 50 per cent for rigid plastics recovered and 25 per cent for flexible plastics, by 2029. Those targets increase to 60 per cent and 40 per cent, respectively, in 2030.

“If there are issues or challenges with recycling those materials, we need to find those out,” said Langdon. “And, because we represent the producers, we’ll also be able to have ongoing discussions with them as we get to that point of, ‘hey, you know, this is the issue we’re seeing with your material. Are there ways that we can address that packaging.’

“And I think those discussions are easier to have if we have uniformity across the country,” said Langdon, “and they know changes will make their materials or their products or the packaging more recyclable across the country.”

The Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority, a provincial government agency, will enforce the new regulatory framework, including the targets, and has the power to inspect, audit, issue monetary penalties, and undertake prosecutions.

In Europe, EPR has been mandated in EU member countries for a number of years. But it’s been hard to figure out if the program is actually meeting its environmental goals, said Clarissa Morawski, the chief executive of Reloop, which promotes a circular economy for all resources.

“Is it actually incentivizing redesign -- greener design?” asks Morawski. “We haven’t quite figured that out,” despite numerous studies, she said. “I would say ‘probably not.’

“I think that people overestimated the influence that EPR would have,” said Morawski. “They thought, ‘oh, yeah, if you start charging producers fees, they’re going to shift to better packaging.’ But the fees aren’t big enough. That’s the bottom line.”

Producers in Europe, and in Canada, pay into EPR programs based on the weight of the packaging they produce, which Morawski says incentives the use of lighter-weight materials -- in other words plastic, which has traditionally been hard to recycle for many reasons.

EPRs “have the unintended consequence of sometimes stimulating a shift to lighter weight,” said Morawski. “For example, if you go to the baby food section now, there used to be glass jars. And now there’s a lot of multi-laminate packaging.”

However, there is evidence that EPR programs can increase recycling rates.

In British Columbia, 100 per cent EPR has been around for a decade, and recovery rates for numerous materials have increased, including plastic, although less than a third of flexible plastic collected was recycled in 2021.

In Ontario, recycling rates have climbed about as high as they can, said Lakhan, because the province’s recycling infrastructure was built to recycle paper, glass and aluminum cans.

Multi-laminate packaging, like a chip bag, needs to be chemically recycled, he said, a process that breaks down the plastic into polymers, its basic building blocks.

“Right now in Canada, that’s a very, very limited application,” said Lakhan of chemical recycling. “So the writing’s on the wall that we maxed out the recycling system. The changing nature of what makes up packaging has essentially made our conventional recycling system obsolete.”

Still, the producer responsibility program in Ontario is coming at a pivotal time, when UN member countries around the world are negotiating a treaty to reduce plastic pollution.

And governments, non-profits and companies alike are looking for solutions to create a circular economy for packaging, spinning what has heretofore been garbage into gold.

Canada, like many EU countries, is on the cusp of mandating a minimum percentage of recycled content in plastic packaging, which could be game-changing. Industry experts say the minimum will be 30 per cent, but the government has committed to upping that to 50 per cent by 2030.

The federal government has high hopes for coming regulations, not only the recycled content minimums, but new rules for recyclability and compostability labelling, which haven’t been legislated yet.

Environment and Climate Change Canada said in an email that the changes will not only strengthen the demand for recycled plastics, but “improve recycling systems and product design.”

(The minimums will not apply to plastic packaging that is in direct contact with food, other than beverage containers.)

Langdon, of Circular Materials, believes EPR is an important step that will allow producers to implement a more consistent framework for recycling and that will induce producers to make the investments needed to make their packaging more recyclable.