EPR will hold companies…

EPR will hold companies accountable, encourage packaging innovation, and help Ontario move toward a circular economy. EPR regulations should go into effect in 2026, as planned, and should NOT be postponed until 2031.

The proposed changes to allow up to 15 per cent of a producer’s recycling target to be met through incineration is the opposite of what the government should be doing. Burning non-recyclable waste is not recycling. This is a fundamental distortion of what “recycling” means. The most recent Canadian Standards Association (CSA) guidance — CSA R117:24, Plastics Recycling: Definitions, Reporting, and Measuring — was published on Nov. 22, 2024 (see attached link), and provides an authoritative definition of recycling in Canada. It defines recycling as: “The processing of waste materials to produce secondary materials from which new products are made." The standard explicitly excludes energy recovery processes such as incineration, often called “waste-to-energy,” from being counted as recycling.

Ontarians care about the environment, and we want to see action, not excuses. We expect our government to stand by the principles that inspired EPR in the first place: clear responsibility, enforceable standards, and a genuine push toward waste reduction and recyclability.