Leaders in the Canadian waste and recycling industry are currently
wrestling with the implications of Ontario Environment Minister John Gerretsen's
discussion paper "Toward a Zero Waste Future" that proposes to move the province
toward European-style Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). The discussion
paper was put out in association with the five-year review of the province's
Waste Diversion Act, under which the Waste Diversion Ontario (WDO) agency was
created that oversees program development for product stewardship and blue box
funding.
Under the current blue box recycling model, industry "stewards"
pay 50 per cent of net municipal curbside recycling costs for certain packaging
materials and fibre. Yet much material doesn't find its way into the blue box
and non-designated materials may still end up in landfill. The programs are
expensive for municipalities, and the cost for towns and cities as well as
stewards is likely to soar in the months ahead as prices in commodities markets
have dropped precipitously.
In an EPR scheme, brand owners and producers
would pay the full cost of end-of-life management for their products and
packaging, the idea being that with this pressure the private sector will
establish the most eco-efficient system; this may include recycling but also
other approaches, including reuse and reduction, that some say have been
neglected in the focus on recycling.
No one knows what the outcome will
be of Minister Gerretsen's discussion paper, but the timing (well away from any
election) and the text of the discussion paper itself suggest the government is
serious. The paper indicates the government plans to enforce waste diversion for
the industrial, commercial and institutional sectors that, despite producing
twice as much waste as the residential sector, have largely escaped waste
diversion requirements and send large amounts of material (including recyclable
wood, fiber, plastics and metals) to landfill, simply because it's cheaper to do
so. In an EPR scheme such practices would be banned. Having to pay directly for
end-of-life management for their products and packaging could trigger change in
the way goods are produced and sold, including deposit-refund programs for many
materials, private systems to collect wastes for reuse by the manufacturer, and
possibly even a resurgence of beverage-container refilling by the soft drink
industry.
Such changes will no doubt upset the apple cart (as is likely
intended) and those industries that have benefited from a status quo recycling
system will be resistant to change, including any waste disposal company that
simply hauls garbage to landfill with no added value. Yet for bold companies,
the new system will present tremendous opportunity; new ways of doing things
will emerge and vastly larger amounts of recyclable materials will be processed
into new products. The landfill's loss will be the recycling plant's gain. Some
municipal waste management staff may find new work in private industry; those
that stay will perhaps find themselves presiding over a waste stream that is by
and large compostable organics.
Waste experts have wasted no time
starting to think through what the new system might look like. Usman Valiante --
principal of Corporate Policy Group (CPG) in Orangeville, Ontario -- has already
proposed a system that, among other things, envisions a re-formulated
Stewardship Ontario put in charge of managing product waste, along the lines of
the Dualles system in Germany. Other concepts are emerging in rapid
succession.
Readers can access Valiante's presentation slides in Acrobat
PDF format by looking under the most recent entry at Editor's Blog at
www.solidwastemag.com The
forthcoming December/January edition of Solid Waste & Recycling magazine
will feature a Cover Story devoted to analysis of issues related to the Ontario
"Toward a Zero Waste Future" discussion paper.