The program is currently run by the Ontario Stewardship Council and the cost is split with municipalities.
However, a new report on the blue box program by David Lindsay recommends that the producers of the waste – businesses – provide blue box collection and pay for the entire cost.
“The blue box will still be at the curbside. The producers will find a new way of collecting or utilize existing municipality’s infrastructure,” said Environment Minister Jeff Yurek, in an interview with 680 NEWS.
Yurek says that while any such change would be phased in over the next seven years, it’s time for an overhaul because the program has “stalled.”
“It has not really grown over the last 15 years. Its costs are pegged to increase $10 million dollars a year,” he said, adding that 30 per cent of items put in blue bins end up in landfills.
Ontario is the birthplace of the blue-box program. The curbside recycling program was first put in place in Kitchener in 1981.