To whom it may concern,…

To whom it may concern,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on this proposal.

I am extremely displeased to see this government watering down our recycling targets at a time when our landfills are nearing capacity and the Americans can force our garbage trucks away from the border at any minute [1]. This is not time to double down on our linear take-make-waste economy, and, as this government surely understands, not the time to be creating more garbage that can be exploited by the Americans as a strategic vulnerability. Instead, this is the perfect opportunity to expand our circular economy efforts and build a future that is more sustainable, more resilient, and within the ecological bounds of our planet. Specifically, I would like to see the following:

• Maintain the expansion of extended producer responsibility to schools and multi-residential buildings—it would be unfair for tenants to shoulder the cost of recycling through their rents while single-family households get their recycling paid for by producers.
• Maintain the requirement for non-residential collection—the point of EPR is for producers to pay for the costs of all their garbage in order to disincentivize the creation of excess packaging and waste. Removing non-residential and public-space collection will create a “leaky” recycling system where the incentives to reduce waste are much weaker.
• Restart efforts to create a deposit-and-return system for all cans and bottles, not just alcohol.

With all the recent talk about thinking big and “nation-building,” I was hoping that this government would be leading the charge towards a better future. Canadians are tired of the outmoded systems that are leading us to the brink of ecological collapse. I urge this government to stop doubling down on the obsolete systems that have thrust us into this crisis and to instead build an Ontario that will be sustainable and resilient for generations to come.

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[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-waste-landfill-crunch-1…