So, I was pretty excited back in 2019 when the province announced it was going to start a program for household hazardous waste. We were tired of telling folks that, no, they shouldn’t put HHW in the garbage, but actually, there was no place to take it. Years before, the province had even paid SWRC to consult on what a program should look like. We carried out a whole process and provided a draft regulation… and then, nothing. So, yeah, it was great to finally have options for the products that are considered the most dangerous.
But then, the province decided not to include fluorescent lights or any other mercury products. Oof. Mercury is pretty bad stuff, and questions about those lights were one of the most frequent. I get why lights got left out – fluorescent lights, while found in houses are more common in commercial buildings, and this was a household regulation – I just wish they’d chosen to expand the regulation scope rather than cut the mercury out entirely.
And then, the definition of what the program was going to consider hazardous became more complicated – pesticides had to have three things on the label, aerosol containers had to have two hazardous symbols and other items were left out as well. So, not only would products be excluded from the program, but all of us would be completely confused by what was in and what was out.
Before the program, some municipalities hosted HHW collection days at their own expense, which was not a budget line for the faint of heart. The new regulation was meant to relieve municipalities of that burden, but so many products are excluded that municipalities still foot the bill for more than half of what residents bring in. For example, in 2025, Saskatoon covered the costs of handling 55% of materials, Regina 56% and Yorkton 61%.
So, on one hand, it’s cheaper than it was. On the other, there’s still a pretty big gap. Municipalities either choose to keep paying or they try to run depots and events that only accept items covered in the program, which means they turn away more than half of what residents bring in (and … there’s still no good home for those turned-away items).
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programs like this are supposed to shift responsibility and costs from municipalities to the companies that produce the items. The current program doesn’t quite manage that.
The good news is that the HHW program is up for review and the Ministry is in the process of revising the regulations. They’ll be releasing draft regulations for comment soon. They need to hear that we want the scope both expanded and made simpler – like, how about including everything with a hazardous symbol (an already established labelling system that we’re all familiar with)?
My goal is for producers to manage all the materials and the costs, and for HHW to not end up in landfills. This requires a more comprehensive program and one that is easy to understand. If hazardous products have to exist (a different rabbit hole …), let’s make sure they’re dealt with properly.
