Author name: John Mullinder

You hear it all the time from provincial and municipal politicians. “Industry” is dragging the chain on waste diversion, lagging way behind municipal efforts. This politically charged claim may be true for some waste streams, we don’t know. But there’s strong evidence that it’s certainly not true when it comes to packaging. Packaging is one

There’s a pie-chart in the Ontario Ministry of Environment’s Waste Reduction Strategy document that’s been bugging us for several months now, and although we’ve tried to get an explanation from the MOE both verbally and in writing, we have received nothing to date[1].       The pie-chart is titled “Ontario’s Waste Stream” and claims that

The oil boom in Western Canada is having a little publicised effect on the natural environment: deforestation. As we pointed out in a blog[1] back in August last year, the extraction of oil and gas (the raw materials from which plastics are derived) is responsible for more than double the deforestation in Canada than the forest

Here’s our shot at trying to clarify some of the evident confusion about recyclability. Technically Recyclable: The great majority of printed paper and packaging ending up in Canadian homes is perfectly recyclable.  A small minority of materials do cause some technical and cost problems at the processing stage, however. Sometimes this is because of ignorance

Waste management policy is a hot topic at the moment as various provinces grapple with introducing or modifying what they are calling “Extended Producer Responsibility” or EPR programs on residential printed paper and packaging. The real elephant in the room, however, is the future role of municipalities in Blue Box waste management. In our view,