Bluewater Recycling Association President Says Shifting Responsibility for Packaging To The People Who Produce The Packaging Is Working Well

by Bob Montgomery

The province of Ontario passed a law that came into effect on the first of April that would see the producers accept responsibility for the packaging they produce in the area serviced by the Bluewater Recycling Association.

BRA President Francis Veilleux says when the Blue Box Program was introduced in the late '80's the municipalities were both financially and operationally responsible for the program but now the producers are. So the producers are now paying and are responsible for the operation of the Blue Box Program. For the residents, it should be business as usual, because the producers in this area have decided to hire the Association to continue providing the service. So instead of the residents paying for those services through user fees and taxes, the producers are.

At this point, Veilleux says the residents still have the same containers, the same frequency of pick up, the same materials and everything else for now. “But in 2026 when their obligations change, what you're probably going to see is a common list of materials across the province, so it doesn't matter whether you live in Ottawa or Windsor or this area, you'll have access to the same list of materials for recycling, and that will start some time in 2026.” As far as anything beyond that, operationally, they've restructured how things are done. They are still collecting materials, they're still being delivered to Huron Park, they’re still processing some of the material here. Some of the other producers have chosen to just pick it up from here and send it elsewhere for processing and that's their choice. Veilleux says contractual obligations have changed with this new arrangement, but so far it's working very well.

Veilleux says one of the objectives of the program is that having the producers pay for the recycling will encourage them to look at how much packaging they actually need, and how much they could eliminate, and how they could make some of that packaging easier to recycle. He also points out that the products the producers are producing are used all over North America and around the world, so their focus is not limited to Ontario, but the program is growing in Canada and in the United States.