Ontario has not mastered the art of diverting waste. Far from it, collectively only 23 per cent of our total waste is saved from going to landfill. Nor has Ontario shown an acumen for making less waste, government ministries being among the bigger offenders. In Ontario, recycling programs vary depending on where you are in the province. The government shies away from setting uniform high standards for municipalities and waste producers.
In fact, this legislation offloads much of the power to bodies outside of the Ministry of the Environment.
That worries me. So does the fact that the waste management sector is pushing hard for incineration waste-to-energy programs to count as “Recovery”, the Fourth “R” and to embrace 4Rs, as has occurred in the European Union.
In Ontario, we don’t need 4Rs in this bill. 3Rs are plenty if you do them right. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. We should be sticking to our course of defining what it means to have the best recycling collection program in the world in our homegrown blue box approach. Set sustainability targets. Force places like banks, service stations, construction sites and public spaces to offer recycling. We all know where the likely litter hosts are. Get full ICI participation from Industry, Commerce and Institutions. The province should be initiating awareness-raising campaigns and best practices, doing everything possible to elevate public thinking and action.
It would not hurt to tell the Ministry of Environment that we support 3Rs not 4 in Ontario’s proposed Waste Reduction Act to counteract the industry lobby, you can comment on Bill 91 here until September 4.
Another problem with Bill 91: It shuts the door to new deposit-return systems. Any legislator worth his or her environmental salt will want to stand up and defend deposit-refund systems as part of the mix in Ontario, some of which involve small fees of a few pennies.
Impetus for the cumbersome Bill 91 came from the government’s desire to be forever off the hot seat after its stewardship agency badly botched the roll out of eco-fees in 2010. Some of those eco-fees were quite steep. Those costs would be built into the product pricing under Bill 91 and summarized on the price tag.
The fee I want to preserve is the effective, tried-and-true, deposit-return system. Total recycling results in less litter and near perfect diversion.
Ontario Beer Stores show a 99% recycling rate for materials returned to their locations. It’s a simple system that everyone understands. Deposit-return has a place in the waste reduction regime. No one’s going to quibble over a few pennies extra on a can of pop or a pack of smokes.
In the absolute political fever to erase eco-fees from the electoral memory and from the books, Ontario policy writers were not able to recommend viable deposit-return schemes such as are running in other provinces.