Ontario's new omnibus bill centralizes waste authority and revises recycling rules

An omnibus bill from the Ontario government removes a key municipal power to approve or block landfill projects and alters the rules for the province's recycling system. The Building Ontario Faster Act, Bill 140, was introduced on Oct. 27. It grants the province greater authority over recycling costs and reduces requirements for recycling certain plastics. The legislation also makes it easier to develop waste-to-energy incineration projects. The government says these changes are necessary to address shrinking landfill space and new U.S. tariffs on exported Canadian waste.

Environment Minister Todd McCarthy said Ontario must develop its own solutions for managing garbage. "We have to build our landfill capacity because we’re running out," McCarthy told reporters last month. The province has depended on American landfills for decades, shipping about 3.44 million tonnes of garbage south in 2024. That amount represented 27 per cent of Ontario's landfilled waste, according to industry group Waste to Resource Ontario. The recent U.S. decision to impose a 50 per cent tariff on some waste imports adds pressure to find in-province disposal options.

The bill's changes to recycling rules come as Ontario's revamped Blue Box program, which fully shifted responsibility to packaging producers, completed its transition in early 2026. This extended producer responsibility system was designed to give companies a financial incentive to create more recyclable packaging. It also standardized the list of accepted materials across Ontario, adding items like coffee cups and black plastics. Some waste experts, however, question if the new legislation signals a retreat from earlier recycling ambitions.

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Calvin Lakhan, co-creator of York University’s Waste Wiki project, said the province has scaled back its plans. Targets for recycling difficult materials like flexible plastic wrappers were reduced or delayed in 2025. Lakhan said expanding the list of recyclables without sufficient processing infrastructure is a core issue. "Just because you can put something in the recycling bin doesn’t mean that it gets recycled," he said. Materials like multi-layered chip bags are expensive and complex to recycle, often ending up as waste despite being collected.

Recycling costs have risen sharply while diversion rates have plateaued. Lakhan provided figures showing the residential Blue Box program cost about $90 million in 2002, recycling roughly 55 per cent of collected waste. By 2024, annual costs had climbed to approximately $600 million, yet the recycling rate remained near 55 per cent. He attributes much of the cost increase to the proliferation of hard-to-recycle packaging materials that strain existing systems.

Ontario's remaining landfill capacity is limited and concentrated in a few sites. Waste to Resource Ontario reports that 57 per cent of provincial capacity is located at just seven landfills. The group projects existing landfills could be full by 2037 if waste exports to the U.S. continue, or by 2034 if those exports stop. Your Space Hamilton reported earlier this month that the legislation would remove the rule requiring municipal support for landfill projects. The province is increasingly considering waste-to-energy incineration to reduce garbage volumes. These facilities burn trash to generate electricity but still produce ash and emissions that require disposal. The omnibus bill aims to facilitate more such projects as part of a broader strategy to manage Ontario's waste within its own borders.

With files from The Narwhal