The province is loosening the rules that aime to make companies limit the environmental impacts of their product packaging. It’s a step backwards.
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Just as Ontario’s long-awaited recycling reforms begin to take root, Queen’s Park is preparing to gut them.
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The province’s extended producer responsibility (EPR) program was designed to make companies accountable for the environmental impacts of their packaging and to shift the cost of managing that waste away from municipalities and onto the producers themselves. This long-overdue change was meant to drive companies to cut down on excess packaging and ensure their products are designed for real-world recyclability.
But now, under pressure from industry, the provincial government is proposing to walk back these commitments. The proposed changes are a step in the wrong direction — one that threatens to undermine the credibility and effectiveness of the entire recycling system.
One of the biggest threats is a proposed five-year delay in enforcing recycling targets. Originally slated to kick in by 2026, these mandatory targets — for example 80 per cent for paper or 50 per cent for rigid plastics — would now be postponed until 2031. These aren’t arbitrary numbers. They were set to hold companies accountable, encourage packaging innovation, and help Ontario move toward a circular economy.
The proposed amendments don’t stop there.
The government is also planning to allow up to 15 per cent of a producer’s recycling target to be met through incineration: burning non-recyclable waste and calling it recycling.
This isn’t just a loophole. It’s a fundamental distortion of what “recycling” means.
The most recent Canadian Standards Association (CSA) guidance — CSA R117:24, Plastics Recycling: Definitions, Reporting, and Measuring — was published on Nov. 22, 2024, and provides an authoritative definition of recycling in Canada. It defines recycling as:
“The processing of waste materials to produce secondary materials from which new products are made.”
The standard explicitly excludes energy recovery processes such as incineration, often called “waste-to-energy,” from being counted as recycling.
Taken together, these measures represent a serious weakening of Ontario’s recycling system, just as municipalities are stepping up efforts to boost public participation in waste diversion.
Here in Ottawa, the city is actively implementing its Solid Waste Master Plan, rolling out waste separation in public parks and conducting outreach in multi-unit residential buildings to improve sorting and reduce landfill waste.
Ontarians care about the environment, and they want to see action, not excuses. They expect their governments to stand by the principles that inspired EPR in the first place: clear responsibility, enforceable standards, and a genuine push toward waste reduction and recyclability.
Concerned citizens have until this Friday, July 4, to speak up. Comments on the government’s proposed changes can be submitted at the Environmental Registry of Ontario: ero.ontario.ca/notice/025-0009.
Public pressure matters; now is the time to use it.
Valérie Leloup is co-founder and CEO of NU Grocery and strategic lead for waste and circular economy at EnviroCentre. Duncan Bury is the co-founder of Waste Watch Ottawa.
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