Tire dealers are complaining the wheels have fallen off Ontario’s tire recycling programs as scrap rubber piles up in sites around the province.
A dispute over how to spend tens of millions of dollars in environmental fees charged to consumers each time they purchase a tire is one of the reasons Ontario’s tire recycling program appears to be spinning out.
Thousands of scrap tires are piling up in yards and at tire retailers because tire haulers have no place to bring them to recycle them, while one of the major tire processors in Southern Ontario walked away from the system, complaining they weren’t paid millions for their work.
“Tires are piling up on the streets. That’s what’s happening,” said Danny Ardellini, whose company E360S shut its Barrie recycling plant down earlier this year. Ardellini says he had to lay off 110 workers because the company never got paid for its work.
“In 2024, we were roughly owed, I call it, between $30 and $35 million,” he said. “We continued on for a full year without getting paid. But then we just couldn’t do it any more, so we had to stop.”
Consumers pay about $5 a tire, which is collected by tire producers who are meant to use that money to pay to recycle them.
The system has been phased in since 2019, when producers were given responsibility for recycling, instead of Ontario Tire Stewardship, whose executives faced a corruption investigation.
But as those producers jostled to claim tens of millions in fees, E360S moved to recycle more tires, attempting to sell credits to rival organizations who needed them to prove they had met their targets.
Many didn’t buy, choosing to settle with the regulator, the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), for $7.44 million earlier this year instead.
RPRA told CTV News it doesn’t get involved in commercial disputes, but has reminded producers they are “required to continue collecting and recycling or retreading tires from the collection system whether targets are required or not.”
Those targets were reduced earlier this year from 85 per cent of the weight they sell to 65 per cent of an averaged weight.
That’s compounded problems for tire haulers, who are also facing problems as other tire recyclers have closed shop too, said Scott Cavanaugh of All Star Transportation and Tire Recycling.
“There used to be 17 processors in Ontario, and we’re down to about seven or eight, and four of them are in the GTA,” he said.
He said the number of truckloads he hauls has dropped substantially.
“There’s a lot of tires out there right now. And not a lot of picking up,” he said.
Cavanaugh has started a petition, calling for a revamp of the regulations that govern the tire recycling industry.
He’s pushing to raise the targets, push the regulator to produce public data about where the environmental fees are going, and promote the independence of haulers.
If the province doesn’t do anything, Cavanaugh says the tires that haven’t been collected could turn into a serious hazard.
“They’ll catch on fire. That’s very bad for the environment. And that’s not an easy fire to put out,” he said.
Ardellini said he’d still be processing tires if the regulator had required those fees to go to the business that did the recycling.
“Just enforce the regulation. It’s as simple as that,” he said.