Members Only Articles

OWMA staff and members met last week with the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) to present the association’s recommendations for a new used-tires regulation under the Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act (RRCEA).   

The OWMA’s draft recommendations, which were developed by the association’s Used Tires Caucus, were well received by MOECC officials and will serve as the foundation for our efforts to reform the province’s e-waste, household hazardous materials, and printed paper and packaging programs.   

In early May, the Ministry will be holding broader consultations to provide stakeholders with an overview of the key components of the government’s planned used-tires regulation while gathering feedback that will help to refine and improve this proposal.

This plan keeps the government on track with its timeline to wind up the province’s existing waste diversion programs and industry funding organizations (IFOs), such as Ontario Tire Stewardship (OTS).

On February 17, 2017, the Minister sent a letter to OTS, requiring it to submit a plan to the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority to wind up the used-tires program and IFO by Oct. 31, 2017.

According to the Minister’s directions, the organization and program must be fully wound up by Dec. 31, 2018, so that the government can implement a new producer responsibility regulation for used tires under the RRCEA. 

The OWMA is voicing the waste management sector’s growing concerns over the lack of progress on current landfill approvals.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Glen Murray made comments at the OWMA’s Annual General Meeting and Conference on March 1 about developing a strategy for disposal capacity in the province. The concern from the sector is that the development of this strategy could hold back landfill approvals until it is finished.

In a letter sent to Murray, the OWMA stressed the importance of allowing current projects to proceed through the environmental assessment process to ensure that Ontario has adequate landfill capacity to meet the province’s disposal needs during the transition to a more circular economy. 

Need for a more resilient disposal system

To help provincial officials understand the important role of disposal in our economy, the letter includes information from the OWMA’s 2016 landfill report, which projects that Ontario has only enough landfill capacity to last roughly 16 years.

It also provides the most recent data on waste shipments to the United States, which shows one third of Ontario’s waste, or 3.7 million tonnes, is shipped south of the border annually. This number has continued to increase over the years. Shipments from Ontario to Michigan alone have jumped by more than 30% since 2012.

Without the ability to meet our disposal needs within our own borders, Ontario could have serious difficulties managing service disruptions caused by natural disasters or changes in trade policy in the United States. 

Bridging the data gap

To help develop a resilient waste management system in Ontario, the OWMA has called on the government to work with the sector on building up and refining landfill data in the province.

Proponents of waste management projects require certainty on approvals to properly plan for the expansion and development of sites and facilities. Providing high-quality data to companies and municipalities will assist with locating and developing these projects.

The government has indicated that it would like to work with the OWMA on improving the collection of data and strengthening environmental standards. We hope to provide a more comprehensive overview of this work in the coming months.

New Landfill Property Class and tax ratios

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance has released the final regulation to complete its landfill taxation reforms, which follow the recommendations by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and John Wilkinson made in two reports last year.

O. Reg. 449/16 creates a new Landfill Property Class, which uses the historic valuation methodology to assess these properties as vacant industrial land while including the value of on-site buildings and structures in the assessment based on the cost to replace them.  

O. Reg. 448/16 allows for property tax increases to be phased in over the 2017 to 2020 tax years.

O. Reg. 95/17 is the final regulation, which establishes ratios that allow municipal discretion to increase the tax rate by up to 5% for all but three landfill sites. The County of Elgin, the Municipality of Chatham-Kent and the County of Lambton are treated differently despite the OWMA’s insistence that all landfill sites should be treated equally.

OWMA staff and members are currently working together to assess the impact that the tax changes will have on the sector and are waiting to hear back from the Finance Ministry on several questions. 

The OWMA continues to make progress on behalf of its members by working with the government to identify areas to modernize environmental compliance approvals (ECAs) for activities and facilities in the waste management sector.

The Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) intends to move forward with several reforms to approvals related to financial assurance, brownfields remediation, organics diversion, renewable natural gas and processing facilities.

MOECC held a meeting with industry representatives on April 4 to discuss the steps the provincial government is taking to modernize ECAs and register certain activities on the Environmental Activities and Sector Registry (EASR). There were several important updates at the meeting that concern the waste management sector.

First, the government says it will issue a Request for Bids near the end of April to solicit proposals on assessing the feasibility of moving 15 activities that involve air emissions to EASR registration over the next three years. MOECC staff said renewable natural gas will be a priority focus for this project.

Second, the government says it has an initiative “in progress” to move the assessment and payment for financial assurance away from a paper-based system to the electronic Environmental Compliance Approval System (eECAS).

Third, the government is conducting a pilot project to approve wastewater treatment technologies using ISO 14034 Environmental management -- Environmental technology verification (ETV). This standard helps to assess and verify innovative new technologies to which current government standards cannot be easily applied. Companies that receive verification under this standard will be able to accelerate the approval process for newly developed technologies.

MOECC staff say their intention is to use this same standard to assess new technologies in the waste management sector, specifically for anaerobic digestion, waste processing facilities and the remediation of contaminated sites.

Fourth, the government says it intends to soon post proposed amendments on the Environmental Registry to add clarifications to the Record of Site Condition (RSC) Regulation (Reg. 153/04) and to reduce the administrative burden associated with the development of brownfield sites. One way the government plans to ease the burden is using Qualified Professionals (QP) for routine sign-offs.

For example, one regulatory amendment under consideration would allow a QP to approve the deposit of fill on a property if he or she can demonstrate that the substances in the soil “do not exceed local naturally occurring concentrations of that substance and [the] soil was deposited prior to the Environmental Site Assessment work.”

After making a series of initial regulatory amendments, the government plans to create a “QP Supporting Framework.” MOECC is currently conducting a pilot project in which QPs are using a checklist to complete a Record of Site Condition (RSC) and a Risk Assessment (RA).

According to the government, MOECC is in the planning stages developing a “brownfields electronic service delivery” system to support RSC and RA administration.

Fifth, the government stated that it plans to reform several more approval processes for the waste management sector over the next 12 to 18 months. These include EASR registration, or even exemptions, for certain activities related to the following:

•     Alternative fuels production, and biogas and bioenergy facilities;
•     Waste transfer and processing facilities (possible exemptions could include EASR registration for municipal facilities that store waste);
•     The organics diversion sector (possible exemptions could include EASR registration for community composting facilities).

All of these proposed reforms would support the government’s broader objective to modernize approvals. The government began its modernization efforts in 2011 with aim of replacing Certificates of Approval with ECAs and EASR registration. These efforts must align with the government’s broader priorities under Ontario’s Open for Business and Digital Governance initiatives, as well as the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, more commonly referred to as the Drummond Report.

The Climate Action Reserve delivered the first round of proposed offset protocols to the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change last month, which includes a draft protocol for landfill-gas destruction.

The OWMA has expressed concerns with this draft protocol since it is unlikely to incentivize additional greenhouse gas reductions through the development or improvement of landfill-gas-capture systems.

Because Ontario already requires landfills with more than 1.5 million cubic metres of capacity to have systems in place to collect, flare or use landfill gas, the protocol does not provide crediting options for the destruction of methane emissions at any of these sites.

This restriction severely limits the applicability of the new protocol, which is soon expected to be posted on the Environmental Registry for a 30-day public consultation period.

For smaller landfills sites, a number of additional requirements within the protocol will make it difficult to move forward with new systems to capture and destroy methane emissions.

Next steps

The OWMA will continue discussions with the government about alternative ways to incentivize improvements to landfill-gas-capture systems, which were highlighted in a report compiled for the association by GHD. 

In the meantime, the Climate Action Reserve is moving forward with the adaptation of the remaining offset protocols, which include one for “Organic Waste Management” and another for “Organic Waste Digestion.” The Reserve, which was retained by the provincial government to take existing offset protocols and adapt them for use in Ontario, has stated that all of the offset protocols will be completed by the end of this year.

The OWMA plans to play an active role on the adaptation of the remaining offset protocols related to the waste management sector. We have also communicated the association’s priorities on offsets to the government in response to an Offset Credits Regulatory Proposal that was posted on the Environmental Registry in November 2016.

Our association has called on the government to minimize the red tape associated with offset registration and compliance; maintain a level-playing field between Ontario companies offering offset credits and businesses in other jurisdictions with fewer compliance and regulatory costs; and align offset and energy policies for waste management companies, such as Anaerobic Digestion facilities, which require access to renewable energy markets.

The Ontario waste management sector made gains in operating revenues and job creation while the amount of waste diverted to recycling and organics processing facilities in 2014 increased by more than 7%, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada.  

Total materials managed by recycling facilities in Ontario rose to more than 3 million tonnes in 2014, up 7.6% from 2012. However, the provincial waste diversion rate remains at roughly 25%.

More than 2 million tonnes of the materials diverted from landfill in Ontario were from residential sources (a 5.3% increase from 2012) while slightly less than 1 million tonnes were from non-residential sources (a 12.5% increase from 2012).

Gains in job creation, operating revenues accompany increased waste diversion

The uptick in waste diversion was accompanied by increased revenues and job growth in the sector. The number of waste management workers inched up in 2014 to 14,476 – a 1% improvement over 2012. Operating revenues for the sector saw bigger gains, rising more than 6% to $3.77 billion in 2014, up from $3.55 billion in 2012.

The national trend was similar to Ontario, with gains in job growth and operating revenues, along with a 7% increase in waste diversion. Total waste diverted in Canada, as of 2014, now stands at 9.1 million tonnes.

The OWMA has continued to call for a greater focus on increasing waste diversion because of its positive effect on the economy.

In 2014, our association commissioned a study with the Conference Board of Canada, which found that moving to a more circular economy, in which materials are increasingly recovered and recycled into new products, could support the creation of about 13,000 new jobs and provide a $1.5-billion boost to the province’s GDP.