‘We cannot allow the Ford government to continue harming our environment,’ says letter writer
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Picture this: Your city, full of old, discarded tires piled up in parking lots and fields.
Tire piles are eyesores. They’re health hazards, breeding grounds for mosquitoes, leaching toxic chemicals into groundwater, and fire hazards — highly flammable, threatening to release toxins into the atmosphere at any moment.
This sounds like a dystopian society, but across Ontario, it’s become a reality. Since the Doug Ford government lowered mandatory tire recycling from 85 per cent of the province’s tires to 65 per cent, tires have been piling up across the province. Despite the eco-fees that consumers continue to pay to ensure their tires are recycled, thousands of tires continue to sit in piles throughout Ontario.
Previously, Ontario Tire Stewardship set collection and recycling targets to ensure tires were kept out of landfills and pileups. Tire producers were obligated to collect old tires and ensure they were recycled. In true Ford government fashion, they have ended the tire stewardship and, once producers meet this lower target, they can simply stop collecting tires. This has resulted in hundreds of thousands of tires piling up throughout the province.
Tire pileups have significant environmental consequences. When left outside, tires leach heavy metals and toxic chemicals into soil and groundwater. They’re highly flammable and extremely hard to extinguish, often burning for weeks at a time, releasing toxic, carcinogenic chemicals into the atmosphere, harming the environment and human health.
It’s small policy changes like this that end up making a huge difference. Tire pileups continue to grow throughout Ontario. We cannot allow the Ford government to continue harming our environment; it’s imperative that we pressure the provincial government to reverse this policy change and let them know that environmental protection cannot continue to fall by the wayside.
Molly O’Toole
Bracebridge