Time to fix the blue box
Long before global warming became climate change, and then climate crisis, Ontario had the blue box.
Kitchener led the way on curbside recycling in 1981 and, by 1994, the province required all cities and large towns to have a blue box program.
People expected that over time, as technology improved and markets developed, more and more products would be tossed in the blue bin to be recycled into something new. But it hasn’t turned out that way.
Recycling rates have been stalled for 15 years. Only 60 per cent of blue box materials make it into the system. Worse still, up to 30 per cent of what goes in the box isn’t recycled at all but sent to the landfill instead.
The relatively easy-to-recycle newsprint, glass and steel containers have increasingly been replaced with much harder to recycle products like laminates, black plastic and polystyrene. The recycling rates on those kinds of materials can be as low as 10 per cent.
It’s bad enough that the blue box is struggling to live up to its environmental expectations. But its costs are also soaring — up 50 per cent from 2003 to 2017 — and municipalities are struggling to sell materials in a volatile world market.
All these problems are laid out clearly by provincial adviser David Lindsay in his report on renewing the blue box.
The report, posted publicly last week, recommends a sixyear transition from the system we have now, which is half paid for and run by municipalities, to one where product producers assume all the costs and responsibility for the blue box.
The ultimate hope, of course, is that making producers financially responsible will incent them to reduce unnecessary packaging, innovate and opt for materials that are easier to recycle.
It’s the right way to go. But, as always, the devil is in the details.
On Thursday, the Ford government announced it will follow Lindsay’s recommendations and is already selling this as a big win for municipal taxpayers, who will eventually be relieved of millions in recycling costs. But this change must come with robust regulations to keep producers focused on the best of what’s possible in recycling, not what’s easiest or cheapest. The government shouldn’t simply pass on the cost and responsibility to the private sector and walk away.
We need only look at what a dismal job the private sector has done with waste diversion in the commercial and industrial sectors to know what happens without strong recycling rules.
And already there are major points of contention between industry and municipal government, according to Lindsay’s report.
Everyone agrees there needs to be a standardized list of what goes in the blue box. But industry, he says, wants to decide that all on its own and municipalities, quite understandably, have concerns with that. What will the diversion targets be and how they will increase over time? There’s no agreement.
That’s a lot the Ford government will have to deal with — and get right.
That’s worrisome because this government has a terrible track record on environmental regulations of any kind. It has repeatedly dismantled environmental protections while claiming it’s making things better. Premier Doug Ford did that with his climate-lite plan for Ontario, which replaced the Wynne government’s more robust climate change initiatives, the gutted endangered species act, and reductions to housing density targets that encourage more sprawl.
Government of all stripes have long talked about making producers responsible for their products but have struggled to move past the concept stage. Ontario needs to get this right.
It’s the environmental results that matter in the end, no matter who’s paying the bill.
To that end, a renewed blue box system must grapple with the fact that many Ontarians live in apartments and condos. It’s ridiculous that they don’t have the same easy access to recycling as homeowners do.
Lindsay recommends an awfully slow change to that problem: “After completing transition, producers should gradually expand collection in multi-residential buildings as well as parks and public spaces.”
That would mean nothing will start to change for renters and condo dwellers until sometime after 2025. Environment Minister Jeff Yurek should figure out how to speed that up, particularly in big cities where highrise living is the new normal.
The effects of climate change don’t discriminate based on dwelling type, so why should the blue box?
Ontarians want to do the right thing when it comes to recycling. “They believe that every time they put something in the blue box, they are reducing litter and waste and improving the environment,” states Lindsay’s report.
The province has its work cut out to renew the blue box system so it lives up to that expectation.