‘We are a little worried we are going to see a lot more recycling in the garbage in that sector, but that is something we thought was possible,’ says official
Editor’s note: The county does not manage waste collection in Barrie and Orillia, which are separated cities. Orillia is facing a similar situation, however, and is pondering an end to collection of recycling for local businesses and industries.
Industrial, commercial and institutional (ICI) facilities, such as businesses, churches, food banks and municipal offices, will not be included in the new recycling program beginning in the new year.
Significant advocacy from various levels of government across the province, including the County of Simcoe, to include the sector in blue bin pickup when the province implements its Blue Box Regulation on Jan. 1, 2026 — which shifts the financial and operational responsibility for recycling from municipalities to the producers of paper and packaging materials — has ultimately failed, county councillors learned during Tuesday’s committee of the whole meeting.
Staff learned the news Oct. 1 through an email from the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP), which notified the county that the Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs) will no longer be moving forward with allowing municipalities to pay for recycling collection from IC&I locations, said Rob Elliot, the county’s general manager of engineering, planning and environment.
“We only received the correspondence from the ministry last week and felt it was really important to get this in the hands of the council so you can understand some changes that are on the table, or at least, some back-stepping when it comes to the blue box program,” said Elliot.
In the same email, the MECP also noted that depots would now be allowed to combine residential and IC&I material in one bin and, as a result, county staff are in negotiations with Circular Materials, which will manage residential recycling in the county under the province’s new extended producer responsibility (EPR) program.
“We have gone to the government numerous times to try and, at the very least, allow us to pay for the cost of the management of recycling from this sector. To put it in perspective, we have just under 6,000 IC&I (locations) in the county. We are currently actively collecting from about 2,100,” said Rob McCullough, the county’s director of solid waste management.
Currently, the county pays Miller Waste Systems to collect from those locations, he added.
“We pay out of pocket for this now. We have never really been covered for this. All we have asked, and it seemed that our suggestion was actually developed … and was one of the amendments that the government was recommending to the PRO … that they allow just exactly what we asked the province to do — to allow us to pay for the full cost coverage of IC&I. That material would have been able to be collected,” McCullough explained during Tuesday’s meeting.
That will not be happening, he said, adding a meeting was supposed to take place between municipalities and PRO, but was delayed. It finally occurred last week.
“There are two major things with respect to this: one being the ministry heard from the PRO, (which) didn’t feel there was a path forward to negotiations, and since it wasn’t covered by the legislation has said they’re unwilling to go further.”
That now leaves the county with 2,100 locations that will not have recycling collected as of Jan. 1, 2026, McCullough said. However, he noted, garbage and organics will continue to be collected from that ICI sector.
“We are a little worried we are going to see a lot more recycling in the garbage in that sector, but that is something we thought was possible,” he said, informing county council that staff performed an audit this summer and found the amount of recycling in garbage equated to about 19 per cent of what was collected. “We will watch and see how that changes as we go forward.”
The second item of interest, McCullough added, is the decision related to the recycling depot agreements.
“We had previously said we were not willing to host recycling depots for unserviced units at the county, because we would have had to have separate containers — one for eligible and one for ineligible,” he said.
“That has changed and they have said we can combine it, but they’ve said they will only take care of the tonnage that is responsible for eligible units, and we would pay them a price for the rest,” McCullough added.
Staff are in negotiations with PRO on that item, he said.
“We have asked numerous questions, (but) it’s hard to call it negotiations when the other side doesn’t get back to you,” McCullough said. “We are looking at losing about $2 million in direct funding for our recycling depots that we received in 2024 and 2025, and if we sign the agreement they’re asking us to, it is an order of magnitude less that basically fulfills their responsibility, because it’s required that they have depots.”
Innisfil Mayor Lynn Dollin urged council to ensure the county has discussions with the various BIA’s, churches and other impacted businesses to ensure they know about the change, and whose decision it was.
“You all know it will be us who get the phone calls,” she said. “People call the townships and the towns when they are interested in talking about garbage.”
With changes scheduled to be implemented in less than three months, McCullough acknowledged it’s very unlikely the province is going to be able to change the direction in anything at this point.
“They changed their direction awfully late in the game and received a lot of fire, both from us and from the PROs, for the amendments that were made at the very last minute, which has thrown a bunch of questions in it at the worst time possible,” he said. “I can’t imagine they‘re going to make any more changes. They’re going to see what happens on Jan. 1 and go from there.”