Taken together, some believe, those moves could lead to a sea change in plastics recycling in Ontario.
At the heart of the dispute is a fundamental disagreement about the role of plastics in Ontario society. Some — environmentalists and activists primarily — see them as a harm that needs to be limited. Others, largely, but not exclusively, in the plastics and manufacturing industries view them as a crucial tool with a post-use problem, one that can and is being addressed by better technology and co-operation.
That all began to change sometime in the past 20 years, according to Calvin Lakhan, the co-investigator at York University’sproject, as print media declined and the plastics packaging industry boomed. “Over the past 10 years, we’ve had something called an evolving tonne,” he said. “And the evolving tonne is basically a different way of saying that the blue box of today is fundamentally different than the blue box of say, 10 or 15 years ago.
But in 2018, China largely stopped accepting imports of scrap plastic. No other end markets of comparable size have cropped up. And Ontario, like other Canadian jurisdictions, has been stuck with a glut of the hardest to recycle plastics ever since. Under the new system, which is set to come into force in Toronto next summer before spreading across the province, the stewards are responsible for setting up a new, province-wide system, and paying for the entire thing. It’s a principle called Extended Producer Responsibility and it’s meant to leverage both scale and market incentives to drive better recycling outcomes.
But not everyone buys that argument. Lakhan, for one, sees the new system as an expensive and mostly ineffective tool for improving the environment. “Policy-makers have a propensity to try to legislate or regulate their way to sustainable outcomes. And that’s never been effective,” he said. Ontario has had some elements of extended producer responsibility for 20 years. Lakhan doesn’t think the results of that program justify a move to full EPR.
“We spend a lot of money behind a bad idea, but it still doesn’t fundamentally change the fact that this is a low-grade material,” Lakhan said. “To recycle plastic laminate product is $2,700 a tonne. And by comparison, newsprint is about $80 a tonne.” And there just isn’t much of a market for low-grade plastic pellets at that price.
😡😡😡😡😡
Sit in your car at your local landfill site and see all your recycling going into regular garbage area. Recycling is mafia run or has it changed lately?
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: GlobalNational - 🏆 81. / 51 Read more »
Source: GlobalNational - 🏆 81. / 51 Read more »
Source: nationalpost - 🏆 10. / 80 Read more »
Source: globeandmail - 🏆 5. / 92 Read more »
Source: CBCNews - 🏆 2. / 99 Read more »
Source: globeandmail - 🏆 5. / 92 Read more »