Recycling

Advancing Coffee Cup Recycling in Canada

Recycling takeaway coffee cups has long been a challenge. Most are made from paperboard lined with a thin layer of plastic or polyethylene to resist liquids, and this lining can make it more difficult to process in recycling systems. As a result, cups have often been excluded from municipal curbside recycling programs. But that’s beginning […]

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Navigating Ontario’s Blue Box Transition and the Importance of the Entire Recycling Value Chain

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) – a policy approach which makes producers financially and physically responsible for managing the recycling of their packaging – is at a pivotal moment in Canada. By the end of this year, most provinces will have adopted full producer responsibility models for residential packaging recycling programs, which represents a major shift in how

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The Circular Life of a Recyclable Pizza Box in Canada

What’s better than pizza? Pizza that comes in a box that can be recycled! As we celebrate National Pizza Day on February 9, 2025, the Paper and Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council (PPEC) is highlighting the recyclability of pizza boxes and their role in the Canadian paper packaging industry’s circular economy. How is a Pizza Box

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Revisiting Paper Packaging’s Circular Economy as Court Rules on Plastics Ban

A Canadian Federal Court recently announced its ruling in response to the lawsuit brought forward by the Responsible Plastic Use Coalition (RPUC), made up of companies from the plastics industry, who requested a judicial review of the federal government’s decision to add plastic manufactured items (PMIs) to the List of Toxic Substances under the Canadian

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Are we putting the cart before the horse when it comes to EPR in the IC&I sector?

The Paper and Paperboard Packaging Environmental Council (PPEC) monitors environmental issues impacting the Canadian paper packaging industry, especially recycling, since recycled paper-based materials are an important supply of our industry’s feedstock. To that end, we track federal and provincial government activities on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which is a policy approach in which a producer

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Ontario Blue Box Update: GFL acquisition of CSSA and new PROs established

In June, the Ontario government released the final Blue Box regulation, which sets out the framework to transition to producer responsibility, and transfer the full operational and financial management of the Ontario Blue Box program to producers – the businesses that make and sell obligated materials into the Ontario marketplace – with implementation beginning in

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Ontario Blue Box will struggle to make 60% diversion, and none of the ministry’s proposed new targets will be reached

Green visions, aspirational goals, and political grandstanding are all very well in their place. But at some point, we have to be realistic. The fact of the matter is that the overall waste diversion rate of Ontario’s Blue Box is unlikely to improve much over the next ten years, and the new diversion targets proposed

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