As Halifax regional council continues to take measures to reduce waste and curb pollution, the municipality is eyeing a report that aims to put more responsibility on package producers to foot the bill for disposing and recycling the products they sell.
In 2015, Halifax Regional Municipality spent nearly $110 million on its waste management program a 50 per cent increase in costs from 2005 — nearly 10 per cent of its spending budget that year — and the costs keep going up.
Consumers can only do so much, says councillor Richard Zurawski, who also chairs the Environment and Sustainability Standing Committee and says a shift in the waste disposal model is long overdue.
“If you put a value on plastic that’s sitting in a rosebush on Dunbrack (Road), then somebody is going to collect it because somebody is going to be making some money off it,” said Zurawski.
That’s why HRM is pushing the province to adopt an “extended producer responsibility” program to change the way we dispose of product packaging and the value associated with it.
It’s billed as the circular economy, and the producers and retailers who create the packaging would be on the hook for disposal costs.
It could potentially lead to a change in the way retailers package their goods and create less waste in the landfills.
“You go to the grocery store now and you get your eggs and you can possibly get them in a package that’s made of plastic or made of paper,” explains deputy mayor Tony Mancini.
“And for the producers, if they are doing that in plastic it costs them more the recycle it, so now they have the incentive to do it the right way.”
We’re in a throwaway society and the cheapest means for companies to package is with plastic, Zurawski says, so shifting the waste responsibility to the package producers not only helps the environment but it creates economic opportunities, as well.
It also gives the consumers more power in choosing which items or products they want to buy.
“By creating a market for it, you create a value for it,” said Zurawski. “And you get away from subsidizing and that’s what we’re doing — we’re subsidizing garbage for taxes.”
Extended producer responsibility is seen as the way forward with waste management, as several other provinces like British Columbia and Quebec are already doing it.
The Retail Council of Canada and their retail partners understand it’s the way forward, but says there’s no cookie-cutter formula
“We just want to make sure it’s done in a way that you can still achieve all your environmental goals without making it needlessly punitive on business,” said Jim Cormier, Atlantic director with the Retail Council of Canada.
“Our retail members live and work here in Nova Scotia as well and they understand it and they aren’t opposed to this. Let’s just make sure we work on this together.”
New Brunswick has just rolled out a pay-for-waste program, making packaging and printed paper producers responsible to bear the waste recovery costs of its products.
Nova Scotia, meanwhile, has yet to say whether it will follow through with a producer pay program. All municipalities have said they would be on board with an EPR program.
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