Ontario's Blue Box Program - Plastics

by Clayton Sampson

Plastics, specifically how to recover and recycle more of the consumer plastics in the waste stream, is one of the major challenges with the Ontario blue box program. While the blue box program has done a very good job with capturing a significant amount of the consumer paper and packaging, there is room for improvement. And the improvement is to be made with the recovery of the plastic component of the residential waste stream.

Overall the blue box program is recovering about 64%, by weight, of the paper and plastic packaging in the residential waste stream. The recovery of most plastic containers and packaging is at the low end of the recovery rates for the various materials. In fact, other than PETE bottles and HDPE containers, all the other plastic containers and packaging are recovered and recycled at rates of 50% and lower.

This has led to direction from the Minister of the Environment to look at the blue box program and try to determine ways to increase the recovery and recycling of all plastics to rates of at least 60%. This has many challenges that have to be dealt with. The first challenge is to ensure that there is capacity in the processing facilities to handle the increase in the recovery of these materials. Significant investments are being made to the processing capacity (material recovery facilities) to expand the processing capacity by the installation of optical sorting equipment and expanding facilities.

The second challenge is ensure that there are markets for the materials that are collected. There are partnerships and investments being made with plastic recyclers to develop processes and facilities that will be able to handle more and a greater range of plastic packaging. This work should enable programs in Ontario to meet and exceed collection and recycling of more than 60% of the plastic packaging waste stream.

Information on the efforts to expand the plastics recovery and recycling infrastructure in Ontario can be found on the Stewardship Ontario website and the Continuous Improvement Fund website.

One piece of recent news in Ontario has been the release of a new discussion paper by the Minister of the Environment, which details a direction towards full Extended Producer Responsibility for the recovery and diversion of large parts of the waste stream in the province. The discussion paper is available on the Ontario Environmental Registry.

Remember if you are looking for any information on waste management programs in Ontario, don't hesitate to contact Clayton at csampson@wdo.ca or phone him at 519.539.0869.

(Source: November 2009 WasteWatch)

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