Trash Talk

Old-Fashioned Ways for Modern Garbage
Designed to be Disposable
Ontario’s Garbage Woes
The Real Costs of Ontario’s Waste
What Choice Do We Have?
Why Product Stewardship Works
Something We Can All Agree On

Old-Fashioned Ways for Modern Garbage

Once upon a time, almost all of our garbage was food scraps and ashes. Municipalities started collecting and disposing of this waste to clean up the streets and protect the public’s health.

Archive picture
Garbage in the early 1900s was largely ash and organic waste.
Source: City of Toronto Archives

But as modern life became more complex, so did our garbage. Today, it’s no longer just food scraps and ashes in the garbage heap. Now, our trash bins overflow with disposable packaging, plastic, electronics and toxic household substances.

A lot of these new products are more difficult and expensive to recycle and discard. Some can even cause serious health and environmental damage if not properly managed.

Graph

In Ontario, we still have the luxury of putting almost anything we don’t want on the curb to be taken away. But we can’t afford to keep doing it this way.

The centuries-old strategy of collecting and burying our waste ignores the realities of modern life – and it’s not going to work for much longer.

Designed to be Disposable

Today, products aren’t designed to last, but designed to be used and discarded. It’s not as convenient as it seems – when you consider the environmental and economic consequences of a throw-away society.

Canadians generate more waste per capita than anyone else in the developed world.
Each person in Ontario produces 920 kg of waste per year, or 2.5 kilograms every day. That adds up to 12 million tonnes of waste in Ontario every year.

We need industry to develop products that use less packaging and are designed to be recycled at the end of their useful lives.

We also need industry to be responsible for the costs of their products’ entire life. It can be win-win-win, with cost-savings for energy and raw materials, reduced waste, and a healthier planet.

Ontario’s Garbage Woes

For years we’ve been burying large portions of our waste, but with shrinking landfill space in Ontario and more hazardous and complex waste, new solutions are needed.

Consider these facts:

Ontario’s landfills are filling up. Since 1989, 649 of Ontario’s 730 landfills have closed.
With only 81 landfills left, we must choose to recycle more or create more landfills or incinerators.
Only 24 per cent of Ontario’s waste is being diverted from landfills. Almost 80 per cent of waste is disposed.
35 per cent of Ontario’s garbage is shipped to the U.S.
It takes about a generation, a willing community and a lot of tax dollars to build even one new landfill.

The Real Costs of Ontario’s Waste

Whether we like it or not, there is a price to be paid whenever we throw something out.

The total cost of managing Ontario’s waste in 2009 was over $1 billion.
Of that, producers contributed $133 million for programs such as blue box, household hazardous waste and electronics stewardship programs.
In 2008, municipalities spent $21 million just to manage closed landfills – because while it may seem cheap to bury waste today, you keep paying tomorrow and well into the future.

AMO doesn’t think it’s fair to offload these costs onto property taxpayers. Both producers and consumers are involved in making waste – and both should be helping to pay for it.

What Choice Do We Have?

We need to develop a long-term plan for managing Ontario’s waste. And with the Ontario election around the corner, we need to start asking the right questions:

Recycling Bin

Is disposal a viable option?
Should we work to divert more of our waste?
Who should pay for the high cost of handling complex trash responsibly?

With our waste piling up and our landfills closing, Ontario can’t afford to put these questions on the curb.

Why does Product Stewardship Work?

More and more, communities are moving towards product stewardship – which makes those who make and sell products responsible for the cost of disposal.

When producers pay for recycling and disposing of their products, they have a reason to make products that are easier to recycle and make less waste.
By encouraging innovative product design and packaging, we benefit from less waste and products that are more easily recycled. It’s better for our health and the environment.
Because the people who make the waste pay to clean it up, it shifts the cost burden away from property taxpayers in Ontario.

Something We Can All Agree On

The process of producing and disposing of Ontario’s waste involves everyone – from manufacturers and retailers, to consumers, taxpayers and government.

Here are some ideas we should all be able to support:

We should minimize the environmental impact of the products we use as much as we reasonably can.
We can do this by reducing, reusing and recycling.
Reducing the impacts of our waste means more than just recycling our products. It also involves making products less toxic, and designing products that use less raw materials and energy to create, and are easier to reuse and recycle.
The best way to encourage producers to design and produce these products is by involving them in the process of paying for and managing this waste.
Producers should help to educate and provide consumers with ways to reduce, reuse and recycle in an easy, free and accessible way.
Producers give life to the products they make. They are also legally responsible for making sure their products are managed responsibility at the end of this life. Part of this responsibility involves helping to shoulder the cost.
When a product reaches the end of its life, there is a cost to managing the waste it creates. This cost should be built in to the product’s production – not paid for by property or income taxes. This way, the producer who profits from the product is the one that pays for its waste.