Glass Recycling in Ontario

Nearly all of greater Toronto's recycled glass will be processed in a new plant in Brampton starting this summer. The new plant, to be built by Montreal-based Unical Inc., means that Toronto municipalities will no longer be shipping their recycled glass to plants as far away as Syracuse, N.Y., and Montreal.

That means the municipalities - who must pay processors to take the glass off their hands - will pay much lower fees. Toronto, for example, currently pays about $48.75 a ton to have its glass recycled; the new contract with Unical will reduce that fee to about $11.

Unical will spend $10 million on the new plant. Stewardship Ontario - an agency funded by industries that produce waste - is also providing a $1.75 million grant to Unical to buy processing equipment.

(Source: Recycling Council of Ontario in Feb. 2008 WasteWatch)

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Glass is one of the most controversial Blue Box materials in Ontario.

In the early 1990s when the Blue Box program was provincially-legislated, food and beverage glass was one of the core, mandatory materials along with newspapers, steel/aluminum cans, and plastic pop bottles. With the introduction of a Deposit-Return program (DR) for liquor containers, and changes in markets and collection efficiencies, municipalities have been questioning the value of continuing to collect glass.

The recent introduction of a DR system for wine and spirit containers has resulted in a significant reduction in the amount of glass being collected in the Blue Box. Informal monitoring reports have indicated reductions of 50% or more in the amount of glass being collected in municipal Blue Box programs. On February 5, 2008, one year after the DR launch, the provincial government stated that the return rate for DR glass was 64%. As the program becomes more established and residents get in the habit of returning their containers to The Beer Store, it is anticipated that glass recovered in the Blue Box will decline even further.

Glass that is being collected through municipal recycling programs is mostly commingled with other materials. A number of municipalities have single-stream collection systems, which results in broken glass that is difficult (if not impossible) to separate back out into clear and coloured streams. Given the limited processing facilities, this material is challenging to market and even just to get rid of. As well, markets for other materials, such as newspaper, can be negatively-impacted since broken glass is a contaminant. (See February 2008 article above)

There is hope though. Stewardship Ontario (SO) has recently announced a partnership between themselves, Unical Inc. and municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to build a new mixed glass processing facility. This facility would process all the glass collected from the GTA Blue Box programs, providing a long-awaited opportunity to recycle this problem material cost effectively. While the facility is expected to have capacity to handle more than the material from the GTA programs, the economics of transportation will be the limiting factor for other programs to utilize.

At the moment, there is no single solution to how to handle food and beverage container glass in Ontario. However, ongoing discussions and the new initiatives that are in play will assist in determining the future of glass in the Blue Box.

If you are looking for any information on waste management programs in Ontario, contact Clayton Sampson at csampson@wdo.ca or phone at 519-539-0869.

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