Paper and Plastics Packaging Archives - The Paper and Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council (PPEC)

Pitting Packaging Materials Against Each Other Misses the Bigger Picture

Recent media articles on the potential of paper packaging to replace some of the single-use plastic items being banned in Canada, such as shopping bags and take-out food containers, miss the bigger picture of waste management and consumption in Canada. Some articles have shared concerns raised by some environmentalists about shifting from plastic to paper packaging […]

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Paper-based Packaging Leads the Way for Ontario’s Household Blue Box Program

Blue Box, Circular Economy, Paper and Plastics Packaging, Paper Recycling, Recycling / Rachel Kagan

Paper-based packaging continues to be a success story in Ontario\’s household Blue Box program, as measured by marketed tonnage, based on new data released by the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), the regulator mandated by the Government of Ontario to enforce the province’s circular economy laws. RPRA’s new Datacall Report summarizes information generated by the 246 programs participating

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Some of worst performing Blue Box materials pay lowest fees chart 1536x1490

Some of the worst performing Blue Box materials pay the lowest fees

Blue Box, Paper and Plastics Packaging / John Mullinder

This is a story about what’s recyclable, what is sent for recycling, and the fees that stewards of those materials pay into Ontario’s Blue Box system. In what seems like a perversion of the ‘polluter pays’ principle, some of the worst performing materials pay among the lowest fees. There are two elements to this story.

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Newspapers’ big fall, but more packaging in Ontario households

Household Waste Generation, Paper and Plastics Packaging / John Mullinder

While the collective weight of Blue Box materials generated by Ontario households has not changed much over the last 16 years (down 12%), the type of material that ends up there certainly has. Far fewer newspapers, for starters. Almost 162,000 tonnes fewer, according to a PPEC comparison of Stewardship Ontario generation data between 2003 and

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Fewer newspapers but more packaging in Ontario households

Blue Box, Household Waste Generation, Paper and Plastics Packaging, Paper Packaging / John Mullinder

While the collective weight of Blue Box materials generated by Ontario households has not changed much over the last 15 years, the type of material that ends up there certainly has. Far fewer newspapers, for starters. Almost 136,000 tonnes fewer, according to a PPEC comparison of Stewardship Ontario generation data between 2003 and 2017. Magazines

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