‘Ottawa’ Reevely: Ontario Plans New Recycling and Garbage Rules, in Pursuit of ‘Circular Economy’
The Ontario government is planning a total revamp of the province’s garbage-handling programs, from blue boxes to fluorescent bulbs to kitchen scraps, hoping to cut the amount of waste we make by 80 per cent over the next 35 years.
It’s also hoping to make manufacturers pay for the whole thing, by some process that’ll be way less politically disastrous than the “eco-fee” sales taxes that knocked the Liberals for a loop six years ago when it turned out consumers hated paying extra disposal fees for stuff they were only just buying.
The scheme is laid out in a document from the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change called Strategy for a Waste-Free Ontario: Building the Circular Economy, which has been in development for years and is now in its final round of public comments. The notion of a “circular economy” is a trendy version of the familiar “reduce, reuse, recycle” — use less raw material, throw less away, mine the stuff you do throw away for the parts that