City’s new recycling plan hits glitch

Just two weeks after Toronto began rolling out mega blue bins, the Canadian Polystyrene Recycling Association in Mississauga is closing its doors, citing declining revenues. The recycling plant was key to the city’s new plan to add polystyrene and plastic bags to the list of items residents can recycle at the curb.

The plant was the only one in Ontario with the capacity to handle Toronto’s expected volume of polystyrene, and had just invested $300 000 in state-of-the-art sorting equipment. Foamed polystyrene is used for food containers and packaging electronic equipment. The volume of polystyrene discarded by Toronto residents is huge: one kilogram of polystyrene packaging fills more than two household garbage bins.

The city purchased large-capacity blue boxes to accommodate the new recyclables. For now, they intend to seek another market. “Normally, there’s a backup,” said Toronto’s director of transfer, processing and disposal of solid waste. “Someone comes out of the woodwork who’s interested in taking the material if there’s a need, and there’s clearly a need.”

Last year, only 20% of the province’s plastic packaging was recycled. Andy Pollack, director of waste management in Peel, thinks companies should only use plastic packaging if they can ensure markets are in place to recycle it. “Municipalities are at the end of the line. We have to manage what packagers and retailers decide to use so we’re constantly trying to figure out – out of all this plastic packaging – what is recyclable and what’s not,” he says. “It’s a big challenge for us.”

Also in Toronto’s new garbage strategy:

• a pay-as-you-go plan that will force residents who put out more garbage to pay for their extra waste
• two new processing centres for organics
• six new reuse centres
• a mixed-waste processing plant

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