The Liberals and the Conservatives put the existing industry-controlled recycling programs on notice with “wind-up” letters detailing when those programs would end. Considered monopolies by people in the waste management industry, the new legislation was to open the industry to competition by allowing new companies to run the recycling programs.
Tires were the first to fall under the authority’s watch. Since January of 2019, Ontario tire recyclers have invested or have planned to invest $13 million in processing plants and technology, said Peter Hargreave, president of Policy Integrity consulting.
The Ontario Electronics Stewardship, the industry controlled recycling program, was told to end its operations at the end of this year and Stewardship Ontario was told to wrap up its household hazardous waste program by the end of June in 2021. Stewardship Ontario also oversees the blue box program, which is supposed to go through a major change as well, with the producers of
plastics, packaging and newspapers taking full responsibility for the costs of recycling.
In other words, a huge transformation of the industry was underway, with promises of regulations for targets to divert from landfill combined with RPRA’s oversight to ensure proper recycling actually happened.
A few months ago, it appeared that Yurek was moving ahead with those plans. He sent the “wind-up” letters and expanded RPRA’s mandate by adding a digital registry for hazardous waste.
Regulations that were expected to have a fall 2019 deadline still haven’t passed. And that left the door open to the producers’ associations, who lobbied against change.
One of the lobbyists, Shelagh Kerr, president and CEO of the Electronics Product Stewardship Canada, sent a letter in November to the government asking it to regulate “mature” recycling programs under the ministry’s Environmental Protection Act. Kerr also asked the government to control the regulatory powers it gives to RPRA.
The ministry is now starting a new search for “oversight models that have been used in other jurisdictions,” its statement said.
Cook, of the waste management associations, said before the 2016 legislation was written, the ministry studied numerous models in other jurisdictions. Many had serious flaws, he said. As a result, the government designed RPRA. Ministry staff who worked on the waste-free plans won an Ontario Public Service Amethyst Award for “outstanding achievements.”
The fight over RPRA’s existence is just the latest in a long struggle between the corporations that produce materials and the waste management industry that recycles them.
In the middle is a government that claims it is sympathetic to business.
In recent months, lobbyists for the producers repeatedly cited red tape, a buzz term the Conservatives have used so often they put an associate minister in charge of its reduction. The recycling industry asked the government to support jobs and business investments by keeping the authority intact.
Last week, before the government’s new position on RPRA, Cook said its continued existence would ensure a “level-playing field” between progressive companies that already invest money in recycling and those with a more lackadaisical approach....
