An Ontario organization that manages recycling on behalf of major car oil and antifreeze manufacturers, including Shell and Esso, is sending used plastic containers to the U.S. to be burned, bypassing a Quebec-based company that has spent millions developing a process to recycle the contaminated plastic.
The producer responsibility organization Automotive Materials Stewardship (AMS) began sending the material in January to ReWorld’s materials processing centre in Kitchener. ReWorld is, in turn, sending the containers to the United States.
ReWorld, a waste management company, said in an email that it ships the contaminated material “as-is” to the Niagara Thermomechanical Treatment Facility, where the plastic is processed and burned to generate electricity.
There is no suggestion that AMS or ReWorld is in contravention of provincial recycling regulations for the hazardous containers.
But the move to burn the plastic, taken together with a recent change allowing 15 per cent of “nonrecyclable” plastic waste to be incinerated and still count toward Blue Box recycling targets, has environmentalists concerned that the Ford government is opening the door to a cheaper way to dispose of plastic.
“The more that happens — we’re seeing it on the blue box side, we are seeing it with this — the less recycling we’re going to have,” said Karen Wirsig, with the non-profit Environmental Defence, “because it’s always going to be cheaper to just burn it than to try to recycle it.”
The province said allowing a portion of Blue Box material to be burned does not promote burning plastic.
The allowance gives producers more flexibility to meet diversion targets and reduces the amount of material sent to landfill, said Alexandru Cioban, press secretary for Todd McCarthy, the Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks, in an email.
The province was supposed to bring in new rules that would have instituted high recovery rates, called an efficiency recycling rate or RER, for the containers starting next year. But the government is proposing to delay those rules until 2028 to give the industry more time to consider recycling options. In the interim, the province has said that burning the containers as energy from waste is an alterative.
David Pearce, executive director of AMS, blamed “commercial arrangements” on the company’s decision to find an “alternative processing pathway” to RPM eco, the Quebec-based company that AMS was using to recycle the containers until late last year, when the two companies couldn’t reach a new deal.
“AMS is committed to invest in and develop recycling pathways so that materials are recovered and used to make new products and packaging. This is our preferred approach,” said Pearce in an email.
Pearce said a lack of recycling options and a need for more investment is why AMS is opting “to recover material for energy generation,” which he said “is preferable to landfill disposal.”
Jason Hahn, ReWorld’s senior communications manager, said in an email that the alternative fuel is “helping to reduce the use of traditional fossil fuels and divert waste materials from landfills.”
RPM, which has been in operation for more than two decades, has invested millions into technology to process the plastic, which comes under the category of hazardous and special products waste.
The containers are rounded up at collection sites, such as garages, throughout Ontario, then compacted and transported to RPM’s plant in Blainville, Quebec, where they are cleaned and decontaminated. The plastic is then ground down and turned into a resin to produce plastic piping used in road construction.
“We’re integral to a circular economy,” said Viviene Ogugua Astley, CEO of RPM, noting the company has found a new use for plastic that has traditionally been deemed hard to recycle.
The plant can process 22 million kilograms a year with about three million kilograms typically coming from Ontario.
Whether the plant will have a shot at renegotiating a contract with AMS, on behalf of a large portion of Ontario oil and antifreeze producers when the province’s new RER requirements kick in, remains to be seen.
Ontario’s Resource Recovery and Circular Economy Act, which puts the onus on manufacturers and companies to create a circular economy for their waste, prohibits using raw materials as fuel or a fuel supplement in order to meet recycling targets, but the agency that oversees recycling in the province says burning is still an option.
“Processors can meet the RER requirements (when they come into effect) by recycling the used oil and antifreeze containers through a process that typically includes sorting, shredding, cleaning, and pelletizing,” said Wilson Lee, RPRA’s chief of programs and public affairs, in an email.
“Buyers can then use the recycled plastic to make new products such as park benches and plumbing pipe,” said Wilson, “or as feedstock in a power plant to generate heat or electricity.”
That came as news to people in the industry, including Maury Shnier, who is the founder and president of Mobius PRO Services.
Mobius is a producer responsibility organization that handles recycling on behalf of companies that sell products covered by Ontario’s Automotive HSP regulations including antifreeze and oil containers, but Mobius has a much smaller share of the market in Ontario when compared to AMS.
“My understanding is that if you recycled it and incinerated or used it as fuel supplement, then that did not count as recovery,” said Shnier, who said Mobius continues to send used containers to RPM in Quebec.
“I am surprised that were are allowing stuff to be burned in the U.S. rather than recycled in Ontario,” said Shnier. “I’m in the business, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
