‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Coun. Ralph Cipolla says of move to shift cost to business owners as part of provincewide transition of blue box program<\/p>\n
The landscape is changing when it comes to recycling in Ontario as the province moves to shift responsibility from municipalities to the private sector.<\/p>\n
Coun. Ralph Cipolla says the move \u201cdoesn\u2019t make any sense\u201d when it comes to small businesses that could be forced to ante up funds to pay for collection of their recycling.<\/p>\n
At Monday\u2019s council meeting, council was asked to determine how best to move forward as of Jan. 1: to eliminate curbside recycling pickup for all industrial, commercial and institutional (ICI) businesses in Orillia or develop an online registration for businesses in Orillia that want to continue receiving curbside collection service for recycling box materials\u00a0at a cost of about $275,000.<\/p>\n
Greg Preston, the city\u2019s director of environmental services, says staff recommend the city stop collecting recyclables for the ICI sector.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a direction some councillors don\u2019t agree with.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we know, businesses pay higher taxes than most residential taxpayers,\u201d said Cipolla, an owner of a downtown business.<\/p>\n
He fears stopping collection would \u201ccreate a lot more stuff on the street\u201d and warned of the \u201cextra expense up and above (other taxes)\u201d for already strapped business owners.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t make sense,\u201d said the Ward 2 councillor.<\/p>\n
Preston says it\u2019s all about economies of scale. Currently, there are more than 15,000 collection stops in Orillia between residential and ICI customers. When the residential component is removed Jan. 1, 2026, there will be about 300 ICI customers, making collection for those customers onerous financially.<\/p>\n
Preston said fixed costs (such as truck and staff costs) would continue but be spread out over dramatically fewer customers.<\/p>\n
He said the city and others have lobbied the province to put pressure on manufacturers and the private sector to step up \u2014 particularly for smaller ICI customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we don\u2019t see any resolution at this point,\u201d said Preston.<\/p>\n
Coun. David Campbell said the concept, in general, has merit.<\/p>\n
\u201cFull producer responsibility: what a great concept,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cWhen I first heard that, I was so excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he hoped the shift to manufacturer responsibility would help reduce \u201cdisgusting\u201d overpackaging.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why he thinks not including ICI customers \u201cmakes no sense whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he thinks the city would be wise to use the $275,000 from the expected $1.8 million in savings (from taking collection responsibility away from the city) to fund recycling services for local businesses.<\/p>\n
Preston warned council that if it took that approach and the province changed its mind on the issue, the city could be left on the financial hook.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we sign a long-term collection contract to collect ICI and the province changes legislation, we could potentially face a claim from the service provider for cancelling service early,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also explained the city, traditionally, recovers only 50 per cent of the net cost of collecting residential materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cICI has never been included as a refundable service through the prior blue box program,\u201d he explained. \u201cNow, the residential collection program is being fully covered by producers and not covered by taxpayers. Businesses pay their taxes, but the cost of operating the service is certainly higher than taxes, so it is in fact being subsidized by residential taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Don McIsaac asked why residential taxpayers should subsidize local businesses by paying for ICI collection, to which Cipolla suggested increasing taxes to business owners by one per cent to cover the costs.<\/p>\n
Campbell said he\u2019s worried about unintended consequences.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy biggest concern is \u2026 we have an industry that has got into the habit of recycling \u2014\u00a0which we absolutely want \u2014 (that) will look at the cost and just throw everything in the dumpster,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this means we\u2019re going to get a tremendous amount of recycling just going to our diversion site, that is a serious concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
Preston noted businesses would have to pay to bring recyclables to the waste diversion site, but he stressed the city could not control what private companies might do with recyclables they collect.<\/p>\n
Council deferred a decision until the Oct. 20 meeting. Between now and then, city staff will canvas Downtown Orillia Business Improvement Area stakeholders on the matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Coun. Ralph Cipolla says of move to shift cost to business owners as part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,97203,66],"class_list":["post-195656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-recyclingwaste-managementcity-of-orilliagreg-prestonorillia-city-council-2025coun-ralph-cipollacoun-david-campbellrecycling-orilliaorillia-recyclingchange-in-recycling-program","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}