Ontario Consultation on Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act Open until May 2  

As RCA members, we want to bring to your attention to the Ontario Government’s consultation process for proposed amendments to their Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act, 2016 regulations on Tires, Hazardous and Special Products (HSP), and administrative penalties.  This includes changes that may affect all producer responsibility regulations, including for batteries and electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and Blue Box regulations. The RCA is watching these amendments closely and considering implications or opportunities in Alberta’s Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) programs. We welcome your thoughts or comments which can be sent to info@recycle.ab.ca.

Ontario has introduced amendments to its circular economy framework in response to rising costs, operational challenges, and limited system visibility. These changes offer important insights for Alberta as it advances its own EPR regulations.  

  • The proposed changes to the Tires Regulation are intended to ensure that tires are collected and processed in a timely manner. 
  • The proposed changes to the HSP Regulation are intended to give parties additional time to determine recycling options for antifreeze and oil containers by delaying recycling efficiency requirements by one year.  
  • Administrative fixes are also proposed, such as removing the cap on administrative penalties, which are expected to strengthen enforcement. 

The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks is also seeking feedback on ways to improve Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) collaboration through potential clearinghouse provisions and how best to support local processing as part of the EPR framework. 

Proposed changes to the Tires Regulation: 

  1. Expand call-in requirements to all sites – Add a provision to require PROs to collect tires from any site that requests pickup, and has 50 or more tires, and add a guaranteed response time during peak tire change times (e.g., 1 month). 
  1. Add new management requirement – Add a new requirement that collected tires must be managed within 3 months of pick-up from any site including via energy from waste (EFW) means. 

Proposed changes to the HSP Regulation: 

  1. Revise recycling efficiency rate (RER) requirements – Delay the RER requirements for antifreeze and oil containers to 2028 and seek feedback on revising the RER for products containing mercury. 
  1. Administrative change to clarify collection site requirements – Revise the regulation to clarify that at least one site is required in the original municipality for upper-tier offsetting, but not for adjacent offsetting. This does not change current requirements but adds clarity in the regulation. 

Proposed change to the Administrative Penalties (AP) Regulation (Tires, HSP, Batteries, EEE, and the Blue Box regulations): 

  1. Remove $1 million cap –  Remove the cap on maximum administrative penalties for both continuing and non-continuing contraventions. This change will help ensure that maintaining compliance is always more cost-effective than opting to pay a fine while remaining out of compliance. 

Seek feedback on shared PRO activities (Tires, HSP, Batteries, EEE): 

  1. Shared PRO activities – Consider if rules related to PROs sharing collection sites and trading excess performance to meet targets should be added to the framework. 
  1. Increase Ontario based recycling – Consider if there should be any provisions (e.g. minimum requirement or incentives) for Ontario based processing of materials. 

The consultation period is open for 30-days and will close on May 2nd. For more details or to provide feedback, visit the ERO (Environmental Registry of Ontario).   A plain language description of the proposed changes is provided here. 

Top