Municipalities like Deep River, seeking help from the province with the new way of doing recycling, appear to have had their voices heard.
But that’s not necessarily good news.
The town has received a letter from the Ministry of Environment (MOE), pledging to help fix the problem of what to do with the blue box collection of recyclable material from what has been termed “non-eligible sources.”
Charles O’Hara, a director with the MOE’s environmental policy division, says the province is drafting amendments to the blue box legislation.
“Maintaining blue box collection for industrial, commercial and institutional (ICI) locations that previously received municipal services is an important part of this proposal,” O’Hara states in his letter to the town.
The collection of recyclable materials has been a hot-button topic for municipalities since the province announced in 2022 that producers of recyclable items would become fully responsible for the management of the blue box program in Ontario.
The blue box legislation allows for organizations called Producer Responsibility Organizations (PROs) to represent the producers of paper products and packaging, with most of the big companies opting to be represented by a PRO called Circular Materials (CM).
Most municipalities made the transition to the new blue box collection system at the beginning of this year, with the full switch to the producer-pay model happening in 2026…
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