On January 1, 2026, the City of Toronto will no longer have any role in residential recycling. If you're interested in how this might affect you, read our blog here. If you're interested in finding out why this happened, keep reading, we've laid it all out.

How it all started.

Ontario’s new Blue Box regulation has been in the works for more than a decade, and it’s based on a good idea: Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). EPR is about having the companies that make products and packaging responsible for the full life cycle of what they produce. This takes the cost off the public, and holds companies accountable for reducing packaging and improving recycling. 

EPR is a concept that environmental groups, like TEA, have pushed for because it's a good tool to get to us zero waste. It’s used widely across the EU, and if done well, alongside other packaging regulations, it can drive real transformation. To work well, EPR needs tough regulations that hold producers to meeting high environmental targets with strict penalties.

The whole idea is to create an incentive for packaging producers to cut down on the mountains of disposable packaging that fills our trash bins and blue boxes. If producers have to pay to deal with it, they'll make less unnecessary waste.

Unfortunately that's not the case in Ontario. Instead, they are continuing to make more garbage, and then whining to the provincial government about how much it costs to deal with their own garbage. And the province is caving to them.

What went wrong with EPR in Ontario? Industry lobbyists have pushed incessantly to weaken it.

Producers have pushed the Ontario government for lower recycling targets, longer timelines, to call incineration ‘recycling’, plus weaker enforcement and lower penalties. 

Importantly, producers convinced the government to scale down the program and argued to exclude many groups: including multi-residential buildings, public spaces, schools, and businesses. 

This all means that our recycling system will not only get much worse, companies don't have to face the consequences of churning out single-use plastic trash.

Municipalities no longer have a role in recycling.

Until 2023, (under the Waste Diversion Act 2002), municipal governments were obligated to provide residential recycling, and producers had to provide funding up to 50% of the municipal recycling costs.

Under the new Blue Box regulation (passed in 2021 and amended in September 2025), producers are responsible for 100% of the cost and delivery of recycling services. That includes collection, scheduling, education, processing and selling the recyclable materials. 

Municipal governments will have no role – and no say – in how the system operates.

What can we do?

TEA will continue to monitor closely and advocate at the city and provincial level for a fix to the recycling regulation. We will continue to do what we can locally to cut waste and improve diversion rates.

Many people, including City staff, are concerned and want to fix the problem, but calls for change are being ignored by an uninterested provincial government. But that doesn't mean we should stop demanding better and the more voices, the more they'll have to listen.

• Contact the Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks, Todd McCarthy and your MPP to let them know you expect the Blue Box regulation to improve recycling - with higher targets, real recycling (not incineration), and to serve the whole province, not leaving anyone out. 
• Demand a deposit on all non-alcohol cans and bottles - all other provinces have deposit systems and the evidence shows they have higher recycling rates and higher quality recycling, ask them why Ontario is so behind.