Progress Report – Strategy for a Waste-Free Ontario: Building the Circular Economy

The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks has developed a five-year progress report for the Strategy for a Waste-Free Ontario: Building the Circular Economy.

The progress report demonstrates how the province is taking action to reduce waste sent to landfill and is committed to creating more opportunities to reduce and recycle all waste. Below are the main highlights.

Highlights of the progress report for The Strategy for a Waste-Free Ontario: Building the Circular Economy

Ontario recognizes the importance of diverting waste from landfill in order to:

• Extend landfill life
• Support innovation and job growth in new environmental sectors that convert wastes into valuable resources.

The Strategy for a Waste Free Ontario: Building a Circular Economy has been part of the government’s approach to tackling waste and supporting a circular economy. 

Since 2017, Ontario has made significant progress in recovering valuable resources from our waste instead of getting sent to landfills or becoming litter polluting Ontario’s parks, communities, and waterways.

We have achieved progress in the following key areas:

1. Enhanced provincial direction and oversight

• The Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA) has a fully constituted board and a transitional operating agreement has been implemented. 
• RPRA launched the registry with portals for tires, batteries, information technology, telecommunications and audio- visual equipment, lighting, household and special products and blue box materials.
• RPRA established the Excess Soil Registry and the Hazardous Waste Program Digital Reporting Service.

2. Enabled efficient and effective recovery systems

• Transitioned all five diversion programs over to producer responsibility, including the blue box, tires, batteries, Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) and Hazardous and Special Products (HSP).
• Included service providers requirements in all five producer responsibility regulations; service providers must register, report and keep records.  
• Incorporated promotion and education requirements into all five producer responsibility regulations.
• Made changes to the Environmental Assessment Act to require municipal support for new large landfills.
• Established the second Tuesday of May each year as Ontario’s Provincial Day of Action on Litter.

3. Increased waste reduction and improved resource productivity

• Issued the Food and Organic Waste Policy Statement.
• Invested over $5 million through the Surplus Food Redistribution Infrastructure program to help keep good food out of landfills.
• Held a joint workshop with Environment and Climate Change Canada on compostables in 2021, and in 2022 completed testing of compostables in Ontario’s organic processing facilities.
• Finalized a new excess soil management regulation and other regulatory changes that will make it safer and easier for more excess soil to be reused locally.
• Released a proposal to modernize Ontario’s environmental approval process for low-risk municipal sewage works.
• Expanded and facilitated broader use of operational flexibility in waste approvals to allow future site changes with well understood impacts to proceed without having to amend an approval.
• Amended Ontario Regulation 101/07 (Waste Management Projects) to streamline the environmental assessment (EA) requirements for thermal treatment-based advanced recycling facilities.

4. Created conditions to support sustainable end-markets

• The Producer Responsibility framework will help Ontario attract innovation and new investments in Ontario by providing verifiable targets that provide certainty of supply for producers who want to use recycled material.
• As part of the battery and EEE transition to producer responsibility, the regulations provide incentives for producers to encourage the reuse and refurbishment of waste batteries and electronic products in Ontario.