Hundreds of thousands of used tires are piling up at a private site near Sudbury, the second illegal stockpile to emerge since a provincial amendment to lower recycling targets was introduced at the end of 2024.
The tires started accumulating in Azilda, about 13 kilometres northwest of Sudbury, after tire producers — companies that manufacture or sell tires, or make products with tires — met the lowered provincial target for 2025 and stopped processing used tires, which are required to be recycled, reused or retreaded.
“The only practical solution at this point is for the ministry to intervene and fix the problem they created,” said Peter Hargreave, an environmental consultant who has worked in the waste management industry for 20 years.
The news of more tires piling up near Sudbury comes less than a month after reports of another large stockpile at a recycling site in Stittsville, near Ottawa. The Ontario environment ministry said in an email that it is setting a timeline with the operator of that site to have the tires removed.
The ministry also said it is working closely with the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority (RPRA), which oversees Ontario’s producer responsibility recycling framework, “to address recent disruptions to the collection and processing of end-of-life tires.”
Hargreave said if the province doesn’t step in to fix the current situation, “stockpiles will continue to grow and auto shops, municipalities and others will continue having issues with getting tires collected.”
Sources who have seen the Azilda site told the Star it holds as many as 500,000 tires, more than 10 times the amount that end-of-life tire sites — places that have permits to store used tires before they are recycled or repurposed — are typically allowed to store.
Adam Moffatt, executive director of the Ontario Tire Dealers Association, said in the wake of the tire backlog he continues to hear from tire dealers, wrecking yards, and municipalities that they are unable to get their used tires picked up for recycling or that the amount of tires being collected is “well below what is required.”
Tire stockpiles became a major environmental concern after a massive tire fire in Hagersville, Ont. in 1990 which burned for 17 days. Ontario’s tire diversion program was created to avoid a similar situation.
An inspection of the stockpile at the William Day Construction site in Azilda is planned for this week when a compliance officer will verify the volume of tires on site, said the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks in an email.
Experts say the backlog is the result of changes made by the province in December of 2024, when it amended the Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act of 2016 to reduce the recovery target for tires.
The amendment changed the 85 per cent collection and management rate to a 65 per cent management rate, meaning tire producers have to recycle, retread or reuse 65 per cent of the tires, by weight, that they put on the Ontario market. The target doesn’t increase until 2030, when it will become 70 per cent.
Hargreave said the province was made aware by multiple groups during consultations on the proposed amendment that lowering the target would cause a significant reduction — by as much as 10,000 tonnes — in the weight of tires processed annually.
“This was a completely avoidable issue,” said Hargreave.
The environment ministry said in an email this week that the Stittsville site still has “significantly more tires than are permitted under ministry regulations.”
The company operating the site, CFT Recycling, appealed a ministry order to clean up the site by February 2. That order has been stayed while the ministry reviews the situation and “informs CFT on a reasonable timeline for tires to be removed from the site,” the ministry said in an email.
Both William Day Construction, which hauls tires, and recycler CFT, work with producer responsibility organizations such as eTracks, the largest PRO in Ontario, which manages recycling on behalf of 70 to 80 per cent of tire producers in the province. There are six other PROs registered as operating in Ontario.
But eTracks said any sites “with tires that exceed limits are independently operated sites,” and that eTracks doesn’t operate any facility or transportation companies.
“eTracks does not want nor authorize stockpiling and continues to try and stabilize the market in the absence of any co-ordination mechanism to address the root issues of the backlog,” said Melissa Carlaw, the company’s vice-president of communications and sustainability.
Carlaw said the company is working with “both of these sites to ensure tires are removed and recycled in accordance with compliance requirements and to get back to acceptable volumes.”
Carlaw added that eTracks processed roughly 20 per cent more tires in 2025 than it was required to by the regulation. “That’s millions of tires that otherwise would not have been removed from the environment,” she said.
Moffatt said that both the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority and the environment ministry have acknowledged in discussions that challenges exist.
“However, there is currently no coordinated action plan in place,” said Moffatt. “The RPRA has indicated that, while issues are present, PROs are operating within the existing regulatory requirements. The (ministry) has advised that reported issues are being reviewed, but similarly, no broader plan has been communicated to address system-wide impacts.”
The resource authority said it passed on reports of large tire stockpiles in Ontario to the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks’ enforcement team “as large tire stockpiles falls under their purview.”
Ontario’s competitive PRO system, which allows a tire producer to choose which PRO they want to belong to, replaced Ontario Tire Stewardship (OTS), a monopoly that handled tire recycling throughout the province for decades.
OTS, funded by eco-fees paid by consumers, was shut down by the province in 2018 after a Star investigation revealed suspicious money transfers, potential fraud and wasteful spending by executives.
