Hamilton’s recycling numbers remain near the worst for large Ontario cities but councillor opposition to change seems to have persuaded city staff to drop proposals plans for improvements. Instead hopes of cutting the amount of waste heading to Hamilton’s landfill may rely on a provincial government initiative that will impose responsibilities on waste producers.
At the beginning of this year staff were finalizing a report to council arguing for bi-weekly garbage collection, but that report hasn’t been delivered despite a time pressure to decide soon on what to include in collection contracts that must be renegotiated for 2020. The staff plan outlined to the waste management advisory committee in late January was quite explicit and said preliminary meetings with individual councillors would be concluded by the end of February.
“A major component of 2020 contract planning is the discussion of transitioning to bi-weekly garbage collection,” noted the minutes of the advisory committee. “Staff will develop a report for the public works committee that will summarize concerns and advantages of bi-weekly collection particularly the cost savings and impact to landfill should weekly garbage collection continue.”
When those minutes became public in early April, several councillors made clear that they wanted no part of such changes. Media reported a negative response from Tom Jackson, Chad Collins and Sam Merulla despite the staff arguments outlined in the advisory committee minutes
“Several other Ontario municipalities have successfully transitioned to bi-weekly collection with little to no negative feedback from their communities,” the minutes explained. “Bi-weekly collection will encourage residents to use their green carts and blue bins more productively and therefore would reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill and increase diversion.”
Provincial numbers for 2014, released after the councillor reactions to the proposed reforms, show Hamilton’s waste diversion numbers stuck at 48 percent. That compares to 61 percent in York Region, and mid-fifties levels in Halton, Durham and Dufferin. Hamilton is also behind Toronto, Waterloo and Niagara Region who scored in the low fifties, but ahead of Ottawa, London and Peel whose diversion rates are in the mid-forties.
Some smaller cities like Guelph and Kingston are close to or above the 65 percent target that Hamilton set 15 years ago with a promise to achieve it by 2008. That objective was changed to 2011 and now seems to have been quietly forgotten.
Hamilton’s diversion rate in 2014 was the same the provincial average but that 48% total includes dozens of small municipalities who don’t offer green cart service or are just rolling it out. The city’s organic collection achievements rank well against other municipalities, but Hamilton scored poorly in the blue box. While most locations, large and small, are collecting better than 70 percent and several are reaching into the nineties, Hamilton stands at only 42 percent.
The waste management advisory committee heard evidence that residents could do much better with their green cart recycling:
“Staff advised that our 2014 curbside waste composition audit indicated 41 percent of weekly garbage still consists of organic material that should be disposed of in the green cart,” say the advisory committee minutes. “One of the advantages of bi-weekly waste collection is it forces residents to focus their attention on diversion collection programs that remain weekly.”
The advisory committee is composed of three councillors and two citizens, one of whom is the director of policy and strategy for the Ontario Waste Management Association, a group that calls itself “the voice of the waste and resource management sector in Ontario”. It replaced a 32-member public advisory group dominated by citizens that strongly advocated for more waste diversion and helped win the city national recognition in 2010.
In its climate action plan released earlier this month, the provincial government confirmed it will adopt the Waste Free Ontario Strategy with the first pieces of legislation recently approved. Among other things it will “establish a new outcomes-based producer responsibility regime that holds responsible persons accountable for recovering resources and reducing waste associated with their products and packaging.”
Currently product manufacturers only have to finance diversion programs and the Wynne government believes those “reduce incentives for producers to make improvements to products and packaging design that would reduce waste.” The government also argues the existing “produce-use-and-dispose” model “is environmentally harmful, financially risky and not sustainable”. Greenhouse gas emissions from waste management have been rising to where they now make up five percent of the Ontario total.