{"id":268142,"date":"2025-11-07T16:50:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T16:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/268142\/"},"modified":"2025-11-07T16:50:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T16:50:16","slug":"ontarios-landfill-crisis-the-cost-of-inaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/268142\/","title":{"rendered":"Ontario\u2019s landfill crisis: The cost of inaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Waste management experts warn that failing to address Ontario\u2019s landfill capacity crisis will have costly consequences for taxpayers and the environment as the province is projected to run out of room for its trash within the next decade.<\/p>\n

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Calvin Lakhan, director of York University\u2019s circular innovation hub warns, if this limit is reached: \u201cThe cost of landfilling goes up enormously.\u201d<\/p>\n

More garbage will need to be shipped out of province, or overseas, and when the costs of waste disposal go up, Lakhan said, illegal dumping also tends to increase.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen people don\u2019t the ability to safely and adequately dispose of their waste,\u201d said Lakhan. \u201cThey will often dump the waste in like ravines and parks.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 1980\u2019s, Ontario faced a similar landfill capacity crisis, and it led to birth of the blue box recycling program.<\/p>\n

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Three decades later, the province is hoping innovation can help avoid a garbage catastrophe.<\/p>\n

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In 2026, new province-wide recycling regulations will come into effect across the province aimed at incentivizing businesses to find more sustainable packaging solutions.<\/p>\n

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The program is called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), and it will be administered by a national non-profit organization called Circular Materials.<\/p>\n

Businesses that package products will have to meet recycling and diversion targets or face fines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an embedded incentive for (producers) to reduce their packaging,\u201d said Allen Langdon, Circular Materials CEO. \u201cBecause if they reduce their packaging, they will reduce the amount of fees they pay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lakhan warns recycling alone can\u2019t solve this crisis.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe need to be asking ourselves, what is the most sustainable packaging option and not what is most recyclable packaging option,\u201d said Lakhan.<\/p>\n

Waste management experts want to see incentives for producers to make reusable or biodegradable packaging, and an expansion of organic waste programs.<\/p>\n

Toronto officials estimate that 40 per cent of what\u2019s ending up in the landfill should go in the green bin.<\/p>\n

Charlotte Ueta, acting director of policy, planning and outreach with the City of Toronto\u2019s solid waste management services, boasts the city\u2019s organics processing facilities have \u201cthe capability to accept items that are not commonly accepted in other diversion programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For example, diapers, women\u2019s sanitary pads and clay or wood chip cat litter is accepted.<\/p>\n

Though Toronto hasn\u2019t made it illegal to put organic waste in the garbage to follow cities with higher diversion rates like Vancouver and San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Garbage incineration is also being considered too easy pressure on overburdened landfills.<\/p>\n

In Sweden, fewer than one per cent of municipal household waste goes to landfill.<\/p>\n

The rest is recycled or burned for energy.<\/p>\n

Environmentalists warn that garbage incineration still creates greenhouse gases and can have negative health consequences, despite technology designed to screen out harmful emissions.<\/p>\n

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\u201cStudies from European jurisdictions where they have a lot of incinerations have also found accumulation of certain toxic emissions in the soil, in the moss, in the trees and plants, and even in breast milk and animals,\u201d said Emily Alfred with the Toronto Environmental Alliance.<\/p>\n

Alfred is also concerned that expanding garbage incineration will simply create a demand for more garbage rather than promoting sustainable solutions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are consumer culture and we\u2019re just generating significant amounts of waste,\u201d said Lakhan. \u201cThe secondary issue is that our infrastructure really hasn\u2019t kept up.\u201d<\/p>\n

York University\u2019s circular innovation hub director said government regulations often lag as the convenience of single use packaging has become pervasive and unavoidable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese lightweight composite materials that can\u2019t effectively be managed in our existing systems which is contributing to an impending landfill crisis,\u201d said Lakhan.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waste management experts warn that failing to address Ontario\u2019s landfill capacity crisis will have costly consequences for taxpayers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,13404,714,66,123294],"class_list":["post-268142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-ontario-politics","tag-politics","tag-science","tag-toronto-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268142","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=268142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}