Via Email to: Jamelia…

Via Email to: Jamelia.Alleyne@Ontario.ca
December 3, 2020
Jamelia Alleyne, Senior Policy Analyst, Waste Diversion
Resource Recover Policy Branch
Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks
40 St. Clair Avenue West, Floor 8
Toronto, ON, M4V 1M2

Re: Ontario’s draft Blue Box regulation (ERO #019-2579)
Dear Ms. Alleyne:
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the draft Blue Box Regulation.
While producers and other stakeholders like municipalities had numerous consultation opportunities, the public – most directly impacted by the proposal - did not. It’s most often the public that ends up paying the costs – be that through taxes, product price increases or via degradation of the natural environment and adverse impacts on public health.
Notwithstanding Covid, multiple virtual formats should have been considered for public stakeholders and we request that they still be considered before the draft regulation is finalized.
Some aspects of what is being proposed are not clear to us and it’s challenging for individuals who are not waste professionals or public employees to get clarification.
Therefore our submission will include comments as well as questions.
POSITIVES OF DRAFT REGULATION
Blue box collection will be expanded to additional communities.
Material collected is to be standardized across the province.
More materials will be designated and collected than is currently the case.
The full cost of Blue Box collection and processing will be transferred to producers/importers/retailers, who should be responsible for products/packaging/packaging like materials THEY introduce into the market.

CONTEXT OF BLUE BOX REGULATION – SHOULD BE PART OF BROADER ZERO WASTE/MATERIALS MANAGEMENT MASTER PLAN
The Blue Box regulation and transition to EPR and the Organics Waste Framework are positive steps however, these should be rolled out as part of a broader policy materials management framework, with clear objectives, to determine whether or not policies meet broader provincial and societal objectives.
In 2008 the Province released a Zero Waste Discussion paper however since that time it has not rolled out waste policy within the context of how would this help Ontario achieve “Zero Waste” -which has as its objective to conserve resources by reducing extraction of virgin materials, to reuse/recycle materials, to produce products/packaging using recycled material with the objective to send as few materials for disposal as possible.
Disposal options considered by producers must be comprehensively reviewed to assess all potential adverse impacts on public health and the natural environment.
For example, incineration impacts must include the long-term impact to land and water (including disposal of incineration residues through ash landfill) as well as impacts to air quality.
WASTE HIERARCHY – 3 RS
The prevailing waste hierarchy should remain, i.e. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. That requires producers to answer basic questions such as: Are all the packaging materials currently used on products necessary to achieve the objective of either keeping food safe and ensure products are not damaged?
Some packaging is intended to deter theft – are there other ways this could be accomplished, via other packaging choices?
How and which products/packaging could be designed to be reusable or refillable? Or part of a deposit – return system?
ASSESSMENT OF GREEN HOUSE GAS AND OTHER AIR EMISSIONS
We are very concerned about how Section 35 of the Regulation is written and in fact we cannot really understand what the intent and potential outcomes of that section are.
It could have the outcome of favouring incineration for the disposal of processing residues and/or contaminated materials not suitable for recycling. It also appears that incineration ash might count towards diversion, which it should not.
Fly ash is highly toxic and bottom ash is laced with toxic residues and NOT benign. When the Durham/York incinerator had a major dioxin/furan exceedance, the facility had some refurbishment and an abatement plan. Testing done at that time, before the emissions went through the APC system and after, clearly showed that very significant quantities of dioxins and furans are created in the incineration process, with, by far most of the dioxins/furans going into the ash that is subsequently landfilled.
These dioxins/furans are some of the most toxic pollutants known and they do not break down in the environment over time. The ash impacts of the Durham/York incinerator were NOT assessed during the Environmental Assessment for that project – ash impacts were excluded from the Terms of Reference.
Furthermore, the adverse impacts of incinerators are borne by host communities and those beyond as toxic air emissions can travel great distances and impact soil and water resources in addition to polluting airsheds. Pollutants such as dioxins/furans and mercury bioaccumulate and impact food supplies.
The potential for adverse impacts on landfills accepting bottom ash as daily landcover doesn’t appear to be actively studied, leaving it to incinerator operators to only test bottom ash when it leaves the incinerator site periodically.
In the case of the Durham-York incinerator, located in Clarington, the bottom ash and fly ash go to separate landfills.
Because producers/importers/retailers CAN pass on full costs of materials management including disposal to consumers, the excessive costs of disposal via incineration may not be a disincentive to producers.
PRIMARY OBJECTIVES FOR THE TRANSITION OF BLUE BOX RESPONSIBILITY TO PRODUCERS UNCLEAR
Strictly transitioning collection, processing and marketing of Blue Box materials from municipalities to producers, and having producers pay for the full cost of this, does not ensure that the broader objectives described above would be achieved.
Producers of products and packaging have gotten a free ride for many years though ultimately, they were required to pay fifty percent of municipal costs.
Equally complicit are retailers, who want products that are cheaper to ship, stock and take up less shelf space and display “well”.
As producers/packagers introduce new materials, from inception these should be designated with the objective that they be produced for Blue Box collection and recycling/reuse.
A key objective should be for producers to reduce the QUANTITY of their materials that ultimately require disposal and to reduce use of virgin resources.
A key objective should be that products and packaging should use the least amount of material required to meet the objective of, as an example, keeping foods safe of products from breaking AND where possible products and packaging should be designed to be reusable/refillable and recyclable and made from recycled materials.
Equally important is to reduce the toxicity of the materials used in products and packaging.
An important objective should be for producers to ultimately redesign their products/packaging in a manner that makes them less toxic, easier to collect and recycle/reuse.
Producers must pay for the FULL costs of managing ALL materials in a manner that results in the fewest adverse impacts on public health and our natural environment. That includes the disposal of recycling residues and contaminated materials collected etc.
Impacts of disposal options MUST be fully evaluated in a publicly transparent manner.
Incineration must NOT be an easy out or characterized as “recovery” AND no electricity produced at incinerators used by producers should be eligible for provincial subsidies for “energy from waste”.
Ash residues MUST NOT count towards diversion targets. To count ash residues towards diversion nor targets would skew the results and favour producers/packagers who use incineration. To repeat, bottom ash is laced with toxic residues and fly ash is highly toxic. Producers should not be permitted to burn their way out of a problem.
Collecting all designated Blue Box materials possible should result in less litter and reduced adverse environmental impact on that front, but that will only happen if ALL products/packaging/packaging like materials in the market eventually end up being designated as blue box material.
Exceptions should be reserved for essential products where there is no substitute.
Many of these multi material so called compostable products end up as garbage and/or some organics processing systems screen them out. This misleading feel good labeling merely perpetuates producers making products that are not recyclable or compostable. Thus, producers continue passing the buck to municipalities who continue to be responsible for organics processing and disposal and to property tax payers who fund those systems.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE FOR COLLECTION OF BLUE BOX MATERIAL?
Blue Box collection should be offered to ALL buildings/operations where products and product like packaging are found and it is positive that Blue Box collection will be offered to long term care and retirement homes as well as public and private schools and certain public spaces.
However, the Blue Box regulation should be expanded to include ALL ICI sector participants whose waste quantities are collectively greater than that of the residential sector and small number of institutional/public space settings eligible for Blue Box collection.
At the very least a plan to expand Blue Box collection to all sectors should be outlined in the regulation and include a target date for achieving that.
The goal should be to provide standardized Blue Box collection to ALL residences and buildings/facilities including industrial/commercial/ institutional operations across Ontario.
People attend a variety of settings including industrial/commercial/institutional settings in their daily lives. If regulated materials collection systems are absent in the ICI sector, or markedly different from the residential sector, then this becomes confusing for all involved including the general public as well as building owners/operators/employees/visitors/clients, etc.
It is not clear that tenants of apartments above commercial spaces/retail stores in many small Durham Region downtowns and Business Improvement Areas (BIAs), would have their Blue Box material collected.
Furthermore, several small BIA businesses get municipal collection. Will that continue after transition? It should.
While it’s positive that public spaces collection will be offered, there must be a concerted effort to standardize and harmonize collection receptacles as soon as possible across the province to avoid confusion and materials contamination.
Currently, even within an individual municipality, there is a great variation in the type of materials receptacles in public spaces. Standardized receptacles will help reinforce positive sorting behaviours.
What about existing multi residential buildings that as of August 2019 did not get municipal waste collection, but who intend to renovate/reconfigure their premises, such that their buildings would thereafter be eligible for municipal collection? What happens if these renovations occur after a municipality transitions to producer collection? Why should they have to wait until 2026 to apply if that municipality has already transitioned and if building meets all requirements? Why could they not be added to list of addresses within a municipality eligible for collection?
As new residential buildings are built, including mixed use buildings with residential and retail/commercial, how will producers communicate with local municipalities to ensure that building design accommodates the current and anticipated needs around producer access and materials collection?
Equally important would be for provinces to advocate for uniform standardized Blue Box services across the country as currently these vary a great deal. Many producers/importers/retailers operate nationwide.
LIST OF DESIGNATED MATERIALS SHOULD EXPAND OVER TIME
An overarching objective should be that the list of designated materials should expand to include all products and packaging that producers/importers/retailers put into the market.
If ALL product/packaging materials are not eventually designated and collected by producers, municipalities are likely to continue to incur costs to operate local reuse and recycling depots, attempt to extract additional lower quality recyclables from mixed waste and blue box materials could continue to end up as litter.
A long term over-overarching objective MUST be that if a product or packaging material cannot be recycled, reused/refilled or is not truly compostable -not merely labeled as such -it should not be produced. E.g. Coffee pods labeled compostable -this is often primarily for marketing purposes to address public pressure -many are NOT truly compostable.
There must be an ongoing incentive for producers to only put materials into the market that can be collected in the Blue Box and reused or recycled and where product/packaging materials include ever increasing recycled content.
ACCURATE LABELLING OF PRODUCTS/PACKAGING MATERIALS
Not all materials that show the universal recycling symbol are truly recyclable in all markets those products are introduced in.
Consumers should be able to evaluate quickly at point of purchase whether nor not a product is truly recyclable and accepted in the Blue Box or whether it will end up as garbage.
COMPOSTABLE MATERIALS SHOULD BE BANNED FROM BLUE BOX
Compostable materials may contaminate other blue box material.
Fully compostable materials should be collected in organics green bins and or where community composters would accept such materials.
Not all municipalities have organics processing programs or processing systems that accept problematic materials like coffee pods. Will those “compostable” materials end up in the garbage?
The Province’s Organics Framework should fully address compostable materials management.

TARGETS SHOULD BE BASED ON POTENTIAL FOR ADVERSE ENVIRONMENTAL/PUBLIC HEALTH IMPACTS
Producers of products, packaging and packaging like materials generally strive for the lowest cost to achieve the specific objective e.g. wrap or contain a product.
Producers must ensure from the outset that the potential for adverse environmental and public health impacts from collection through to recycling through to disposal of processing residues and/or contaminated recyclables is assessed BEFORE a product/packaging is sold to the market.
For some materials like flexible plastics, the current targets are too low and are NOT set high enough for there to be an incentive to reduce or alter the quantity of material used or eliminate it altogether if it is too difficult to collect and recycle. Producers might take a “well, we can’t win them all” approach and that should not be acceptable.
Targets should also be set considering their risk to the environment and public health. As an example, producers lined food tins with BPA – which is harmful - until there was an outcry. Plastic straws and plastic bags of many types continue to wreak havoc in the environment, with the plastics industry strongly resisting attempts to either charge a fee for bags or to provide alternatives for plastic straws and offering straws selectively when required, not automatically.
At what point will the regulation be reviewed, which should include a review of producers’ performance, as well as an evaluation of what targets should apply post 2030?
DEPOSIT RETURN
Ontario should consider a deposit return system for all containers in addition to collecting Blue Box materials. For containers this could be a more efficient collection mechanism for producers and the incentive of financial benefit for returning an eligible product should result in less litter and fewer overflowing blue boxes.
This also provides employment and income for marginalized and/or low income citizens.
Deposit return could be offered for things like restaurant take out containers.
Alberta runs both a deposit return system for containers that are returned to depots as well as offering Blue Box Collection.
REFILLABLE AND REUSABLE PRODUCTS/PACKAGING
Refill and Reuse must take precedence over Recycling.
Reusable containers would help reduce the amount waste. E.g. take-out food waste.
Programs have recently launched in Toronto – see: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/eat-rinse-return-repeat-reusable-takeout-con…
And in Guelph - see: https://globalnews.ca/news/7466134/a-friendlier-company-guelph-return-t…
Certain products could be packaged in REFILLABLE containers e.g. shampoo, laundry detergent, liquid soap etc. and should be recyclable should they become broken/damaged.

TYPE OF SERVICE OFFERED POST TRANSITION. OFFERING DUAL STREAM RECYCLING PROVINCE WIDE SHOULD BE GOAL

Dual stream collection results in less materials contamination and should be expanded province wide, not just where currently offered. This would result in fewer contaminated materials, which often end up as garbage.

PROMOTION AND EDUCATION
Since additional materials compared to the current situation will be collected after transition, and since the goal should be to designate additional materials to be accepted in the Blue Box, clear, consistent and comprehensive public education materials must be developed and provided to ALL eligible households and institutions at the outset and on an ongoing basis.

Given the way PART VIII and Sections 56-58 are currently written, it appears that each producer would develop their own promotion and education materials?? That would be very confusing for Blue Box participants.

Producers should develop their education materials and should post these on their own websites but IN ADDITION, there should be one central and comprehensive Blue Box website that contains information contributed by all producers/importers/retailers.

Public service announcements should run on television and radio to complement other producer education efforts over the transition period.

The public should be able to easily find contact information for each producer/importer/retailer associated with a product to report problematic materials i.e. – those not accepted in the Blue Box.

Public input should be considered when producers conduct research to improve product design.

Furthermore, the Ministry should conduct regular reviews around the success of/problems with the legislation and to make appropriate changes to move Ontario towards zero waste and a true circular economy.

Several municipalities have developed APPs specific to their particular programs.
With a uniform program across the province, producers should collectively develop and update user friendly APPs around the Blue Box program.
Households MUST also be provided with print materials at least annually, as not all households have access to electronic devices and/or the internet.
Over the transition period at least, education materials should be provided at least quarterly.

Additional relevant education materials should be provided when additional products/materials would be accepted in the Blue Box.

ENFORCEMENT

Currently municipalities enforce their Waste By-laws and have a range of tools ranging from encouragement to warnings through to fines to ensure that citizens comply with a variety of materials management regulations.

Unless we missed it, the regulation appears to be silent on enforcement to ensure participation and proper sorting.

Do producers intend to enforce the regulation in some manner themselves OR will they continue to rely on municipal by-law enforcement for residential Blue Box services and reimburse them for these services in certain settings e.g. residential, public spaces?

What about enforcement in the ICI sector, where sorting materials for Blue Box collection may be relatively new requirement for some participants?

FEDERAL MATERIAL BANS

The federal government is currently consulting on banning several plastic materials. Some of these materials are shown as designated materials in the Blue Box.

Should the federal ban come into effect or any other material bans come into effect, it will be important to ensure that public education materials and communications be updated accordingly.

Some municipalities have enacted bans of certain materials e.g. Markham, polystyrene.

RECYCLING FACILITIES

There are a limited number of recycling facilities in Ontario. The 3rd party auditors must be able to evaluate operations used outside of Ontario to ensure that minimum standards would be met.

Producers/Importers/Retailers must invest in state of the art Material Recovery/Recycling/Reuse facilities so that materials are managed in Ontario where possible, so as to create local employment and to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions.

3RD PARTY AUDITS - SHOULD BE ANNUAL

Every three years is NOT sufficient to ensure that the Regulation’s objectives and targets are being truly met. Being accountable for their products will be a new responsibility and cost for many producers. 3rd party audits could catch problems early and allow for remedial measures.

For the public to have confidence in this system, and to incentivize producers to behave appropriately, 3rd party Audits should be conducted annually with the complete audit reports publicly posted on a centralized website as well as on the individual producers’ websites.

Thank you for considering our comments. We wish to be notified of any future consultation on this topic.

Yours truly,

Submitted by Linda Gasser, Whitby,
on behalf of Zero Waste 4 Zero Burning

AND

Kerry Meydam, Courtice and Wendy Bracken, Newcastle,
on behalf of Durham Environment Watch

Contact information:

Linda Gasser: gasserlinda@gmail.com

Kerry Meydam: ksam2@rogers.com

Wendy Bracken: wendy-ron@sympatico.ca