\u201cThe system is self-imploding,\u201d environmental policy consultant Peter Hargreave told Sudbury.com, describing the tire-recycling industry as \u201cjust depressing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hargreave describes a broken system: \u201cYou’ve got a whole bunch of small auto shops and other other places that collect tires that can’t get those tires actually picked up in a timely manner, you’ve got tires that are potentially going to places which isn\u2019t the place they should go, and you’ve got consumers that are paying for fees that they think are actually going to recycle those products, but in many cases, they may not be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The amendments to the act lowered the amount of tires, by weight, that tire producers \u2014 companies like Goodyear, BFGoodrich, Michelin and Pirelli, as well as major auto makers such as General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Honda \u2014 would have to recycle. With no financial incentive to continue picking up after their target is reached, tires are piling up in small yards in places like North York or Orillia, or in industrial sites such as the one in Stittsville, near Ottawa, which held 600,000 tires before the Ministry stepped in Jan. 7.<\/p>\n
Nickel Belt MPP, France G\u00e9linas, whose riding covers the Azilda stockpile said that within the current system, the oversight of it is left to the tire producers, \u201cleft to the industry itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only did the government not make sure that the industry followed the rules, they made the rules even lower,\u201d said G\u00e9linas. \u201cWith no oversight, it became a cash cow for the tire industry, at the expense of every one of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said while the government has the capability and has the responsibility to make it right, \u201cThis is not where their big donors fit, so they have no interest in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a Conservative government that has never spoken about the environment, ever, except to say that we will make it easier to open mines,\u201d she told Sudbury.com. \u201cThe environment is not something that helps them make a ton of money, so it’s not something that they have interest in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CEO of one of the affected companies, Donato Ardellini of Environmental 360 Solutions told Sudbury.com if the Act \u201cdoesn’t get fixed fast, tires are going to be accumulating in the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Ardellini also claims the system was broken long before the recycling targets were dropped. He described the RPRA, run by former Sudburian, Lorella Hayes, as \u201cineffective, slow and bureaucratic,\u201d and in a statement posted to his website said the RPRA is \u201clacking an understanding of how commercial markets work\u201d and accused them of backing down, saying the RPRA \u201ccowed in the face of opposition\u201d from the companies they\u2019re supposed to regulate.<\/p>\n
In some cases, the Auditor General agrees, noting also that the regulator has $20 million in debt \u201cwith no formal debt management policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both the Ministry of the Environment Conservation and Parks, who controls the act, and the RPRA, denied our request for an interview.<\/p>\n
In an email statement, a Ministry spokesperson said they are working with the RPRA \u201cto find ways to ensure that producers and PROs continue to operate their collection and recycling networks so that tires are picked up, sorted and processed in a timely fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n
To understand that, you\u2019ll need a short history of tire recycling in Ontario.<\/p>\n
A short history of tire recycling in Ontario<\/p>\n
Hargreave said that from 2016 until December 2024, the recycling target for tire producers was 85 per cent, by weight, to allow for the approximately 15 per cent of each tire that can\u2019t be recycled, as well as the rubber lost to the road while driving.<\/p>\n
President of a firm he began in 2017, Policy Integrity, <\/a>Hargreave was the director of policy and strategy for the Ontario Waste Management Association. Through this role, he helped develop policy around the circular economy and has also consulted with the RPRA.<\/p>\n He said Ontario’s issues with tires date back to 1990, when 14 million scrap tires burned over 17 days in an outside storage yard near Hagersville, Ontario.<\/p>\n According to reports from the National Research Council of Canada<\/a>, a plume of dense smoke filled with small pieces of rubber led to the evacuation of approximately 4,000 people. A steady slick of oil, created by the breakdown of the heated tires, spread into the soil and surface water and reached the groundwater.<\/p>\n Hargreave said after that environmental catastrophe, lessons were learned. \u201cWe moved to a system where these tires were effectively getting collected right across the province.\u201d<\/p>\n It even sprouted a new, \u201ccrumb\u201d-based industry, he said, referring to the byproduct of shredding, granulation and grinding old tires.<\/p>\n But December 2024 brought an amendment to the 2016 act, one Hargreave said passed despite a consultation process rife with objections. It meant not just a lowered reporting requirement for certain tires, but the lowering of recycling targets: from 85 per cent by weight, to 65 per cent by weight.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd in the span of a year, that system is self-imploding,\u201d he told Sudbury.com. \u201cIt’s a good indication of what can go wrong when you don’t set high targets or higher environmental outcomes with legislation. I mean, it’s just depressing.\u201d<\/p>\n Hargreave said all the producers met their targets in mid-2025, and since that point, most of the tires have been left in piles across the province.<\/p>\n But since another industry was created, there is still a need for crumb, and no tires making their way to tire processors.<\/p>\n A Windsor tire processor told a media outlet on Jan. 27<\/a> that he had to import used tires from the U.S. to keep his recycling plant fully operational in 2025, even as stockpiles were growing, with both Azilda and Stittsville considered illegal sites due to their size.<\/p>\n And all the while, the average consumer funds the system, whether it\u2019s working or not.<\/p>\n Each time a new tire or new vehicle is purchased, you, the consumer, pays the producer what\u2019s known as an \u201cenvironmental handling fee\u201d, also known as \u201ctire stewardship fees\u201d. They are set by the producer and usually range from $4 to $15 (or more) per tire for passenger, light truck, and small RV tires. They are to offset the cost of the infrastructure and operation of the recycling process.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a part of the shift towards producer-run recycling systems, an infrastructure sold, ostensibly, as a way to save the taxpayer and government money.<\/p>\n Under the provincial Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act of 2016<\/a>, producers, as they are called, were required to help recycle what they make, including companies involved in the product or sales of batteries, hazardous materials and tires. Under the RPRA, a tire producer supplies tires in Ontario and is either a tire-brand-holder, an Ontario-based importer, a direct-to-consumer retailer, or the vehicle manufacturer. That list includes the large corporations who sell tires and automobiles with tires on them.<\/p>\n From 2016 to 2018, tire recycling in Ontario was managed by an organization called Ontario Tire Stewardship. While they successfully recycled tires, there were accusations of untoward political contributions, excess expenditures and in the case of one executive, allegations of misappropriation of funds.<\/p>\n As you would expect, they were shut down. <\/a><\/p>\n In their place came the RPRA, and while the enforcement agency is tasked with ensuring the recycling targets are met, the Ministry of the Environment is the one that sets the targets, the per cent of tire, by weight, that must be recycled by the producer, funded, in part, by consumer-paid fees.<\/p>\n There are more than 45 tire producers in Ontario. The largest tire manufacturer in Ontario is Goodyear Tire and Rubber, near Ottawa. When at full capacity, their Napanee-based manufacturing plant can produce 19,000 tires a day.<\/a><\/p>\n Rather than manage the day-to-day of recycling processes, the producers created a producer responsibility organization,<\/a> or, PRO.<\/p>\n The PRO spends the time booking haulers to pick up used tires, ensuring they get to processing facilities and ensuring that targets are met, paid with the consumer recycling fees.<\/p>\n Of the six PROs, only one agreed to speak with us.<\/p>\n E360S\u2019s Ardellini had a great deal to say.<\/p>\n E360S makes their statement<\/p>\n In March 2025, Ardellini posted a statement to the E360S website.<\/p>\n Describing the RPRA as \u201cineffective, slow and bureaucratic,\u201d the statement described the RPRA as \u201clacking an understanding of how commercial markets work\u201d and said the regulator has \u201ccowed in the face of opposition from the PROs and large multi-national corporations they are supposed to regulate.”<\/p>\n Ardellini told Sudbury.com that when he expressed his concerns about the growing tire piles to Hayes in July of 2025, \u201cshe told us to stop collecting tires.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve been telling her for years, if we stop collecting tires, this is gonna happen. We don’t want to do this to the province,\u201d Ardellini told Sudbury.com. \u201cAnd she said, \u2018stop collecting tires, her exact words to me were, \u2018stop collecting the tires\u2019. My jaw hit the table.\u201d<\/p>\n Hayes, one-time CFO (2005-2015) and general manager of assets and finance for the City of Greater Sudbury, might be more familiar to Sudburians for her role with Laurentian University during its insolvency crisis. She was included in a suit against several former directors and officers at the school which accused them of \u201calleged misuse and depletion of the university\u2019s retiree health benefit funds<\/a>,\u201d leading to their cancellation.<\/p>\n Ardellini said without pay, he had to stop collecting tires. The ripple effect hit the other side of his business: he had to shut down his own processing facility in Barrie, cutting 110 jobs.<\/p>\n THE RPRA and the Auditor General<\/p>\n According to a December 2025 report from the Office of the Auditor General,<\/a> the RPRA has been \u201cslow to resolve its low-priority cases of potentially unregistered producers and rarely issues orders to address producers’ non-compliance with data-reporting requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n The RPRA is also, per the report, \u201caccumulating 20.9 million in long term debt with no formal debt management policy.\u201d<\/p>\n The report also states that the RPRA’s processes and workflows \u201cdo not always have due regard for operational efficiency. In example, the Auditor General suggests the lack of RPRA’s escalation process for cases of non-compliance has led to enforcement delays. \u201cRPRA’s allocation of staff resources has also resulted in operational delay in some areas, such as in public reporting and resolving cases of potentially unregistered producers,\u201d reads the report.<\/p>\n The Auditor General states the RPRA \u201crarely escalates enforcement action against producers that have not complied with data-reporting requirements,\u201d and while RPRA publicly reports on the results of producers’ resource recovery efforts as required, \u201cit takes RPRA, on average, a year to publish the data after receiving it.\u201d<\/p>\n Additionally, \u201cRPRA has not finalized procedures for producers of most programs to audit their resource recovery data, increasing the risk of incorrect data being reported and relied on.\u201d<\/p>\n The Auditor General’s office also concluded that the Ministry of the Environment \u201cdid not consistently support\u201d RPRA in meeting its mandate responsibilities, stating the province \u201cconsidered, but did not always address, RPRA’s concerns before making regulatory changes, resulting in operational challenges for RPRA. Ardellini and E360S sued the RPRA for lost revenue over what he claimed was their perceived lack of enforcement, but did not succeed with his case as the judge ruled the RPRA needed flexibility in enforcement as economies and markets change quickly, so there needs to be room for judgment calls.<\/p>\n He told Sudbury.com that\u2019s why tires are piling up all over Ontario: he said rather than examine whether the targets were being enforced, the province simply dropped them by 20 per cent.<\/p>\n Producers pay, producers get paid<\/p>\n Ardellini said rather than prioritizing Ontario-based recycling capacity, the system is forcing businesses stuck with a significant volume of tires to send them to the United States for recycling, just to get them out of their yard, said Ardellini.<\/p>\n \u201cThe consumer-funded environmental handling fees collected in Ontario are being used to pay American-based processors, not being reinvested into local recycling infrastructure and local jobs,\u201d he said<\/p>\n It\u2019s often \u201c significantly cheaper\u201d for producers to pay any assigned penalties than it is to pay for the recycling, Ardellini said, a figure they can accurately calculate based on their knowledge of the penalty structure.<\/p>\n The E360S statement reads that \u201cto add insult to injury, they (the producers) don\u2019t actually have to \u2018pay\u2019 anything for these penalties, because we have been told their PROs have promised to reimburse them from the extra money they have collected from Ontario\u2019s consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMeaning Ontario consumers are paying the fines for these large companies that have missed their recycling requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n And the money paid by one producer will likely end up in the pocket of the others, not the consumer or the businesses suffering the gaps in the system.<\/p>\n![\"030226_peter_hargreave_policy_integrity\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/030226_peter_hargreave_policy_integrity.jpg;w=960.jpeg\"\/)
\nEnvironmental and economic policy consultant, Peter Hargreave, (seen here) is president of a firm he began in 2017, Policy Integrity, and formerly the director of policy and strategy for the Ontario Waste Management Association. Through this role, he helped develop policy around the circular economy and has also consulted with the RPRA. . (Supplied)
<\/p>\n![\"030226_jl_stittsville_site_cft_website\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/030226_jl_stittsville_site_cft_website.jpg;w=960.jpeg\"\/)
\nA photo of the tires located at the CFT recycling site, located near Stittsville, Ontario, near Ottawa. The image is featured on the CFT website. The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks said the site contains more than 600,000 tires. . Image: CFT
<\/p>\n![\"030226_donato_ardellini_e360s\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/030226_donato_ardellini_e360s.jpg;w=960.jpeg\"\/)
\nSeen here is Donato Ardellini of Environmental 360 Solutions. He told Sudbury.com if the Recycling Act \u201cdoesn’t get fixed fast, tires are going to be accumulating in the streets,\u201d Ardellini also claims the system was broken long before the recycling targets were dropped. He described the RPRA, run by former Sudburian, Lorella Hayes, as \u201cineffective, slow and bureaucratic.\u201d . Supplied
<\/p>\n![\"030226_jl_lorella_hayes\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/030226_jl_lorella_hayes.jpg;w=960.jpeg\"\/)
\nIn this file photo is Lorella Hayes, who serves as CAO and CFO of the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), the provincial regulator enforcing the recycling act. Hayes is known to Sudburians as one-time city CFO (2005-2015) and general manager of assets and finance, but also, a name at the heart of the Laurentian University\u2019s insolvency. She was included in a suit against several former directors and officers at the school which accused them of \u201calleged misuse and depletion of the university\u2019s retiree health benefit funds, leading to their cancellation. . Sudbury.com file
<\/p>\n
\nThe province \u201cproceeded with regulatory changes knowing that RPRA would not have time to make operational updates to fully support those changes,\u201d states the report, adding that the government \u201chas never conducted a formal review of RPRA’s operations to identify areas of improvement.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"20260119_mikesauto_brechin\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/20260119_mikesauto_brechin.jpg;w=960.jpeg\"\/)
\nIn this photo from OrilliaMatters.com, Mike’s Autobody and Tyre in Brechin is featured, overflowing with used tires as pickup delays plague the province. Danielle Pitman, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
<\/p>\n