pondering an end to collection of recycling for local businesses and industries<\/a>.<\/p>\nIndustrial, commercial\u00a0and institutional (ICI) facilities,\u00a0such as businesses, churches, food banks and municipal offices,\u00a0will not be included in the new recycling program beginning in the new year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Significant advocacy from various levels of government\u00a0across 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 \u2014 which shifts the financial and operational responsibility for recycling from municipalities to the producers of paper and packaging materials \u2014 has ultimately failed, county councillors learned during Tuesday\u2019s\u00a0committee of the whole\u00a0meeting.<\/p>\n
Staff learned the news Oct. 1 through an email from the Ministry\u00a0of 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\u2019s general manager of engineering, planning\u00a0and environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d said Elliot.<\/p>\n
In the same email, the MECP also noted that depots would now be allowed to combine residential and IC&I material in one bin\u00a0and, as a result, county staff are in negotiations with Circular Materials,\u00a0which will manage residential recycling in the county under the province\u2019s new extended producer responsibility (EPR) program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d said Rob McCullough, the county\u2019s director of solid waste management.<\/p>\n
Currently, the county pays Miller Waste Systems to collect from those\u00a0locations, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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 \u2026 and was one of the amendments that the government was recommending to the PRO \u2026 that they allow just exactly what we asked the province to do \u2014 to allow us to pay for the full cost coverage of IC&I. That material would have been able to be collected,\u201d\u00a0McCullough explained during Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are two major things with respect to this: one being the ministry heard from the PRO, (which) didn\u2019t feel there was a path forward to negotiations, and since it wasn\u2019t covered by the legislation has said they\u2019re unwilling to go further.\u201d<\/p>\n
That now leaves the county with 2,100 locations that will not have recycling collected as of Jan. 1, 2026, McCullough said.\u00a0However, he noted,\u00a0garbage and organics will continue to be collected from that ICI sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d 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. \u201cWe will watch and see how that changes as we go forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second item of interest, McCullough added, is the decision related to the recycling depot agreements.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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\u00a0\u2014\u00a0one for eligible and one for ineligible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat has changed and they have said we can combine it, but they\u2019ve 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,”\u00a0McCullough added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Staff are in negotiations with PRO on that item, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have asked numerous questions, (but) it\u2019s hard to call it negotiations when the other side doesn\u2019t get back to you,\u201d McCullough said. \u201cWe are looking at losing about $2 million in direct funding for our recycling depots that we received in 2024 and 2025, and\u00a0if we sign the agreement they\u2019re asking us to, it is an order of magnitude less that basically fulfills their responsibility, because it\u2019s required that they have depots.\u201d<\/p>\n
Innisfil Mayor Lynn Dollin urged council to ensure the county has\u00a0discussions with the various BIA\u2019s, churches and other impacted businesses to ensure they know about the change, and whose decision it was.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou all know it will be us who get the phone calls,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople call the townships and the towns when they are interested in talking about garbage.\u201d<\/p>\n
With changes scheduled to be implemented in less than three months, McCullough acknowledged it\u2019s very unlikely the province is going to be able to change the direction in anything at this point.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey 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,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine they\u2018re going to make any more changes. They\u2019re going to see what happens on Jan. 1 and go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘We are a little worried we are going to see a lot more recycling in the garbage in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[98058,98057,49,48,10511,98059,98056,295,98055,66],"class_list":["post-198124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-and-institutional-recyclingminister-of-the-environment","tag-cchanges-to-recyling-programindustrial","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-commercial","tag-conservation-and-parks-mecpproducer-responsibility-organizations-prosproducer-responsibility-organizationspros","tag-conservation-and-parksrob-elliotti","tag-environment","tag-recyclingcounty-of-simcoerob-mcculloughcounty-of-simcoe-councilmecpblue-box-regulationminister-of-the-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198124","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=198124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}