Municipal Recyling

Cathie Green | Mar 03, 2021

I’ve worked in municipal waste management & diversion for a decade and write to respond to your article on the ‘dirty little secret about recycling.’ (10 Feb. 2021.)

Dr. Myra Hird is so correct that addressing climate change requires waste reduction and re-use, not just recycling. Municipalities work hard within their limited mandate, to avoid the pitfalls and maximize the gains of an imperfect system they are bound by law to implement.

Much of what we do at a municipal level is enact provincial rules and regulations. In Ontario, municipalities are negotiating with the Province and the Producers of consumer packaging on the transition of ALL recycling programs to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) , precisely the policy framework Hird recommends. The Waste Free Ontario Act was passed by the Liberal gov’t and is being implemented by the conservative gov’t. As Hird notes, EPR puts responsibility for end-of-life costs of consumer packaging where it belongs: with the Producers making decisions about packaging materials and design.

EPR is good news for everyone; it means consumers can vote with their wallets, and Producers have a financial incentive to design packaging that can be recycled cheaply and efficiently. It can be as simple as choosing molded cardboard over Styrofoam to package electronic devices. There’s a strong market for cardboard because it recycles well and is used for so many things. We can’t say that for plastic or Styrofoam, as Hird notes.

Municipalities are not the problem here, and it will not be helpful if consumers lose all faith in local waste diversion programs. If nothing else, recycling saves space in local landfills, and we all benefit from maintaining local control over waste.  I encourage people to continue to work with grassroots waste reduction organizations and partner with municipalities; the 3 ReUse centres operating at municipal landfills in Lanark County are great examples of this.

As for KARC, it is a sorting facility, not a manufacturer, so yes, it sorts recyclables and ships bales of materials to manufacturers based on a bidding process to ensure the best price. It’s a business operation, one stop in a multi-stage recycling process. There’s no need to fault them for doing one thing and doing it well.

EPR will finish rolling out in Ontario between now and 2025, and it will bring many benefits to us all. In the meantime, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - in that order.

Cathie Green