The City of Toronto is seeking public input on Toronto's Long Term Waste Strategy. The survey asks about how best to reduce and divert waste (more on that below), which is great. Unfortunately, the City is also looking at false solutions, like ‘energy from waste’ incineration that will send Toronto backwards in terms of climate action, zero waste goals, and put human health at risk.

You can take the City's Long Term Waste Management Strategy survey here. Keep reading for our tips on how to fill it out.

TEA, along with many other environmental and community groups, have opposed incineration and burning waste for many reasons, and the City’s survey leaves out some of the facts about our biggest concerns: 

• Incineration and energy-from-waste is a climate disaster  – There’s a lot of greenwashing, but the fact is that burning mixed solid waste create more pollution and carbon emissions than coal or gas energy.

• Burning garbage creates toxic pollution - and persistent pollutants that escape filters accumulate in soil and plants.
  • Peel’s Medical Officer of Health cautioned that expanding the Brampton incinerator to burn more waste will exceed safe limits of pollution and contribute to health problems for the (already overburdened) community that lives nearby.

• Most of the garbage bag isn’t garbage! Audits show that most of whats in Toronto garbage bags is organics, plastic and even hazardous materials that don’t belong in the garbage, and definitely not in an incinerator. These bags don’t get opened and sorted - it all gets burnt. 

• Energy-from-waste goes against the goals of zero waste and a circular economy. The Zero Waste International hierarchy ranks incineration and energy from waste as the worst option, and prefers landfill as the less harmful form of disposal . That’s because once an incinerator starts up, it needs a constant flow of garbage to justify the investment - it locks us in to decades of burning waste. 

Instead, we need to invest in everything that can reduce and divert waste, including policies, programs and even technology to conduct secondary sort of garbage bags to retrieve organics and recyclables before sending it for disposal.

Building an incinerator is like building a coal plant – we shouldn’t be investing in dirty, out-of-date technology when we know we need to build greener solutions. 

Our goal should be to find more ways to reduce, reuse, repair things, and to keep materials and resources circulating in the local economy. The good news is that Toronto’s current Waste Strategy includes an aspirational goal of zero waste, and a commitment to building a strong circular economy. There are many ways the City can keep moving forward, and do even more to reduce waste. 

The public survey doesn’t give all the background information, and leaves out some important options. 

Here’s our tips on how best to to advocate for zero waste and a circular economy 

1. In the first few sections, share your comments on reducing waste, diverting organics, hazardous and other material at home. 

• Use the ‘other’ options to share further ideas and comments at each question.
  • Examples can include, stating you support rules to reduce single-use plastic or you would like the City to ensure recycling and organics is easy in all buildings if these are things you support.
• ‘Zero waste’ or ‘circular economy’ were key commitments in the last strategy. If you think they should be in the next strategy too, say so! 

2. The section on residual waste has limited options.

• The only question you can’t skip in the survey is if you prefer landfill or incinerator. Our research points to landfill as the better option. While it’s an awful choice to make, the international zero waste hierarchy prefers landfill over incineration and energy from waste (see above).

• Question 6 in this section is tricky. It seems to actually be asking whether we should build a new incinerator in the City of Toronto. There are many reasons this would be a public health and climate disaster in such a densely populated area (and honestly anywhere) - so we suggest making sure not to choose option B. If we could we would add another option: Landfill plus vastly improved waste diversion efforts to produce less garbage in the first place! (See the screenshot below for reference.)

3. In the last section, you can share your values and what criteria you want the city to use 

• Health isn’t listed as an option, so if you think that’s an important consideration, you can say so in Question 15.

You can take the City's Long Term Waste Management Strategy survey here!

You can watch the live stream from the City's in person consultation from June 10th by clicking here

TEA Backgrounder: Why Toronto Must Say No to Incineration

Want to do more? Make sure you are subscribed to receive our newsletter and follow us on social media (Facebook, Instagram, and BlueSky) We'll be sharing more and keeping people up to date as this issue comes before City Council down the road.